Studies of Resonant Bodies
by Marrrrrrr
Summary: Troy's back, and the group struggles to react to his return. This story is in continuity with Applied Studies in Cannabis and Dream Analysis for Drunkards. Mostly Troy/Britta, but pretty much each canon ship is at least touched on.
1. The Ballroom

_A/N: Apologies to readers of Greendale is where I belong, I still owe you guys an epilogue. Sorry. I just really felt the urge to write this story. __The good news is I got a few chapters of this in the can already, so I can finish up GIWIB free of distractions._

_Like I said in the summary, this story should probably be read after reading Applied Studies in Cannabis and Dream Analysis for Drunkards. Quick summary for those of you haven't: Troy and Britta started having sex during the period where the group was expelled, and Britta told Shirley during the summer, after Troy left._

_I'm trying an experiment this time around: some segments are going to be sexually explicit. frowns on that kind of thing apparently so I'm going to be posting those parts to livejournal (thanks to MC-Aitlyn for warning me about that). I'll make sure to note which chapters are censored (the first one isn't)._

It turned out that the group had already been planning to go out that night, to celebrate finally passing Biology, but they quickly came to the shared conclusion that going to Skeeper's was nowhere near a good enough way to welcome him home.

"It'd be weird," Abed summarized helpfully, "Skeeper's is way too new in our lives. We need something with more resonance in our collective backstories."

They were all seated around the study table. Troy ran his hand over its cool, polished wood surface and smiled. He'd missed it, this past summer. He'd always like to pretend, in his mind sometimes, that the table had picked up something from them all of them over the years. That they'd formed some kind of impression in it, that somewhere deep down in its makeup there wasn't just little wood molecules bouncing around in the emptiness but also little bits of the love all of them had shared over the past three and some years. And that those bits would stay here, in this table, in this room, long after all of them had moved on from Greendale Community College.

_Boy I'm feeling sentimental, _he thought to himself. _Then again, I did just see a for real ghost, like, three hours ago._

"How about the Ballroom?" Britta asked in a chipper voice. Troy looked up, surprised. They'd only been there once before, back when he turned 21, and that night wasn't exactly… high on his list of favorite memories. He saw Shirley look up too, in his peripheral vision, but Britta didn't look at her, she just gave him a bright smile he couldn't help but return. He felt his heart twist itself into a knot as a familiar wave of emotions, and a feeling of intense vulnerability, washed over him. He felt his cheeks warm, and looked away. He suddenly wished they were the only two people here, but the thought of he and Britta, alone in the study room, just dredged up old fantasies that made him feel even more exposed.

"The Ballroom?" Jeff asked. He'd been acting aloof, in the way he tended to do, but Troy could tell his friend was glad he was back. "I like it. Take him where he first drank to get him drunk. It's poetic. But are you okay with that Shirley? I know that bar's, uh, meaningful to you."

Shirley definitely looked at Britta this time. Troy thought she might be mad at her about the suggestion, but the expression on her face seemed more… annoyed than anything. It struck him as way too mild a reaction.

"Uh, no," Shirley said, haltingly, "It's… fine with me."

Jeff seemed placated, so Troy decided to ignore Shirley's caginess.

"I think it's a great idea!" Annie said. "That night was pretty 'resonatey', at least to me." She looked over at Troy and smiled. He smiled back, touched by the memory she must be thinking of. He'd missed Annie, too, missed her earnest enthusiasm, even missed how stubborn and bossy she got sometimes.

"I don't want to eat crappy bar food!" Pierce complained. "And I wanted to get a yard marg!"

"Pierce, you go to Skeeper's all the time with Gilbert! This is Troy's night," Shirley's tone sounded patient, but strained.

"Hey, it was Britta's idea not Troy's," Pierce snapped back.

"Pierce, come on." Troy said, touching the older man's arm. Pierce turned in his chair, looking at him. "The Ballroom's actually pretty nice. You didn't really get to see it that much, last time."

"Alright, fine!" Pierce said, and Troy could hear the pout in his voice. "But I'm going home to eat something first."

#

The food at the Ballroom turned out not to be too awful, after all. The group had grabbed a table a good distance away from the other patrons there that night and filled Troy in on that summer's goings on as they ate.

"It's great you finally got your own business, Shirley," Troy said, in between bites of cheeseburger.

"Oh, thank you pumpkin!" Shirley beamed. "It's going to be a lot of work to get it up and running, but I'm so excited."

"So, what did you get up to in the A/C repair school annex, Troy? Meet any pretty air conditioner repairwomen?" Jeff asked, smirking.

Troy glanced over at Britta without even thinking about it, and he could have sworn he saw Jeff's eyes follow his gaze.

"Aw, no not really man. I didn't really… mesh with the other students that well. They'd all been there at least a full year already and were pretty culty. I'd try to talk to them about something and they'd keep trying to relate it back to air conditioning or papyrus reeds or whatever," he said, scratching the back of his head.

"Creepy," said Annie, taking a sip of her screwdriver.

"Yeah, they didn't allow any contact with the outside world. I still need to find out what they did with my phone…"

"No media whatsoever?" Abed asked, suddenly. He'd been pretty quite up till then.

"Yeah," Troy answered, looking over at his best friend.

"So you haven't seen The Dark Knight Rises? Prometheus? Spiderman?" Abed asked in rapid succession.

"Nope, nope and nope. You thinking what I'm thinking?" Troy asked, grinning.

"Movie marathon!" they shouted together, standing up and exchanging their handshake across the table. It felt good to do again. He hadn't really realized until just then how much he'd missed the gesture.

"Britta, you never watch any movies. You should join us." Abed said, turning to the blond.

"Oh-"Britta said, surprised, looking between Abed and Troy. Her cheeks reddened almost imperceptibly, but Troy noticed. "Sure. That sounds like fun, actually."

"Cool. Cool cool cool." Troy was a little surprised that his friend had extended the invitation. He'd tried to integrate Britta into some of his and Abed's activities before he'd had to leave for A/C school, but his friend had… resisted.

"Hey!" Annie said, sounding a little hurt. Everyone turned to look at her, and she blushed. "Uh, I mean- Britta sees movies. We went to go see Moonrise Kingdom together."

"I-" Abed seemed to be unsure of what to say, which was rare for him. "You're invited too, Annie. Sorry. I thought that was implied. You are our roommate after all.

Annie looked down, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she smiled embarrassedly.

Jeff suddenly slapped Troy across the back, startling him.

"Come on. You're the prodigal son here, right? Let me kick your ass in a game of darts to welcome you home."

#

Troy, it turned out, was better at darts then Jeff, and ended up winning pretty handily. After that, he let Pierce buy him a drink and spent some time with his ex-housemate at the bar. It was good, catching up with him. He seemed to be in high spirits, but whether that was because he was happy to see him or whether he was still relishing his victory over Subway, Troy couldn't tell. Eventually he'd wandered off to talk to Shirley about "corporate strategy", leaving him alone. Jeff had apparently decided to soothe his wounded pride by flirting with Annie (_Again?_, Troy thought to himself) further down the bar.

That's when he saw Britta, sitting all on her own back at their original table. He'd been watching her, off and on, all night, waiting for a point where he could catch her alone. She'd changed clothing in-between the group's post-final meeting and coming to the bar. She was wearing a long-sleeve shirt, some jeans, and her Chuck Taylor's. He recognized the shirt. It was a light, almost cyan, blue and made of a material that looked extremely soft. She'd worn it to his 22nd birthday. He'd told her that night that it matched her eyes.

She smiled at him as he sat down next to her.

"Having fun?" She asked.

"Yeah. I really missed you guys," he said, beaming. He thought she'd been close before, earlier, but now he felt totally intoxicated by her presence. He could smell her, the familiar lavender scent unlocking the memories he'd been reliving all summer, late at night in his dorm, with a new intensity. The way they'd danced at that recital, their hands roaming just over each other's bodies. The little accidental embrace they'd shared on the KFC simulator. The look of concentration on her face as he watched her read a textbook from across the study table when he thought no one was looking. How it felt to be inside her while she writhed under him.

"I missed you too," she said, reaching out to grab his hand. He could hear the longing in her voice, and the idea that she was having similar thoughts sent a little rush of blood into his penis. Again, he felt overexposed, so he looked around desperately for something, anything, to save him. He saw her glass, filled to the top with clear liquid and ice.

"Dang. Did you ask the bartender for the world's largest serving of vodka or something?"

"No, dummy," she said. Her eyes darted away and she removed her hand. "It's water."

"Oh." Troy said, mentally berating himself. _What a fucking dumb thing to say! Why did I just call her an alcoholic?_ "Sorry. I just… I thought you'd be celebrating the end of finals."

"Well, I'm not done yet. I've still got two more psych classes to finish up this week. And besides-," And with those words, her eyes rested back onto his, boring into him with an intensity that startled him "-I don't want to numb anything I'm feeling, tonight."

He holds her gaze, can't help but stare transfixed at the fire behind her eyes. He feels himself leaning in, knows that unless she stops him he's going to be kissing her, right here in the middle of the bar, in front of everyone. And he doesn't care. Doesn't even understand why he should. Her lips part.

"Troy?" Abed's voice suddenly asked. "Can I talk to you for a second?"

Troy pulled back from Britta with a jolt. Abed was standing there, facing them, though Troy hadn't even heard him approach. Britta blushed a furious pink.

"Sorry," Abed apologized. "It's important."

Troy looked at his friend with concern. Abed, who almost never drank, held an empty beer bottle, and looked serious. Even more serious than he usually did. Britta took his hand in hers again.

"Go on. I'm not going anywhere." She told him, before giving Abed a shy smile.

Abed lead him over to the bathrooms, away from the bar proper. Whatever he had to tell him, he apparently wanted a little privacy to do it. They stopped in front of the metal door that lead out back, to an alley.

"What's up buddy?" Troy asked. Abed wasn't looking at him.

"I wanted to have a couple of drinks, first. Before we talked." There was an edge to his voice that only increased Troy's growing sense of worry.

"Abed?"

"I've gotten used to sleeping alone. In the blanket fort I mean."

"Abed what are you talking about?"

Abed turned his head and looked directly at Troy, unblinking. "I'm taking down the Dreamatorium."


	2. Behind the Ballroom

_A/N: This is the abridged version of this chapter. To read the full version, which contains sexually explicit material, copy and paste this into your browser (you'll have to clean it up first, sorry): h-t-t-p (forward slash) (forward slash) marr rrrrr . live journal . com (forward slash) 1452 . html. I'll also put a link to my livejournal in my profile._

Britta watched as Abed came back around the corner to the bathrooms, alone. She frowned. _Where's Troy?_

She got up from the bench and walked over to where Abed had sat down at the bar by himself. He sat slumped over his elbows, but gave her a small smile when she touched him on the shoulder.

"Abed?" she asked. "What happened?"

"We had… an important conversation," Abed said. He was usually pretty hard to read, but the way she felt his shoulders slump as he spoke was impossible to ignore.

Britta felt a stab of guilt. She'd been so elated when Troy had returned out the blue that she'd completely forgotten about Abed's… whatever that had been today. In fairness to her, of course, she'd assumed the return of Troy would make him feel better. Not… worse. As much as she wanted to find Troy right now, to be with him, she felt an obligation to Abed.

He'd asked for her help, after all.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

His smile, which already looked half-hearted, slipped a little.

"No. No I'm not. Can we meet again this week? For a proper therapy session I mean. I feel… stuck in my own head."

Britta pushed down her immediate feeling of fear. Her time in the Dreamatorium today had been… intense. But she was a psych student. If she didn't learn to deal with a little personal discomfort, what good would she be?

"Of course Abed," she said. "How about Thursday? I'll have free time by then; my hardest final is on Wednesday."

He nodded.

"Only… can we do it at my place this time Abed? No offense or anything, but, uh-" Britta paused, unsure of how to broach this subject. "After today, I'd appreciate having things… a bit more where I feel at home."

"Right. No, I understand." Annie's laugh burst out from farther down the bar, but neither of them paid it any attention. "And… for what it's worth…" his voice broke, surprising Britta. "I'm sorry about that."

"Abed…" She frowned sadly. He really was in pain. She rubbed his shoulder, drawing closer to him.

"It's alright. I'll be alright, Britta. Troy's outside, out back. You should go talk to him. He's pretty upset too."

Britta felt conflicted. On the one hand, a dear friend was in heavy emotional pain that was maybe brought on, at least a little bit, by her therapizing. On the other hand, ever part of her being (one set of organs in particular) was telling her to find Troy. To find that look he had given her right before Abed had interrupted them, the steely conviction of it, and to lose herself in the feelings it drew out of her.

"Really, I'm fine Britta. I don't want to make his homecoming any more disappointing then I already have." Abed said, breaking her train of thought.

"Listen, Abed, at least go sit with someone else, okay? I'm a little scared of how lonely you sound right now."

Britta looked around the room. Annie was fawning over Jeff further down the bar. _Typical, _Britta thought. Annie had been getting her panties wet for Winger ever since that big speech in "court" today. Not that it hadn't been a good speech, it had been. It had shown a lot of growth on Jeff's part, actually, which had cheered her up enough to recognize what a terrible idea that hair streak she'd been contemplating had been.

_Focus, Britta_. No go on Jeff and Annie, that would be way too awkward a position to put Abed in. She pointed over to the booth where Shirley and Pierce were sitting.

"Why don't you go rescue Shirley? Who knows how long Pierce can suppress his natural instinct to be as offensive as possible?"

"Okay, if it'll make you feel better. And Britta?" He met her gaze. "Thanks. You're a really good friend."

She hugged him.

#

Troy was standing about halfway down the alley, leaning with his back to the wall, his gaze cast upwards at the night sky. It was unseasonably cool for late summer, and looking up Britta could see that the stars shone more brightly than they usually did in early September.

Britta stood in the doorway for a moment or two, studying him. His hands were bunched in the pockets of his jacket, and he slowly slid down the wall into a crouching position. His face was hard, unmoving, but Britta could tell he was in pain.

She took a step into the alley, and the door slammed shut loudly behind her. Troy flinched, looking over with a startled expression.

"Oh, Britta," he said, breathing a little easier.

"Sorry," she apologized, walking down the alley over to him. "I didn't mean to disturb you. It's just… I was worried. Abed seemed really shaken up. What'd he say?"

He stood as she approached; smacking his hands together to clean the dirt off them.

"He wants me to sleep in a different room."

"What? You mean at your guys' apartment?" She asked.

"Yeah. He wants to take down the Dreamatorium. Turn it into a regular bedroom." He breathed out heavily. "He doesn't want me in the blanket fort anymore…"

"Troy… I'm so sorry. Did he say it like that?"

"No. He said something about getting used to sleeping on his own again." Troy frowned. "But… I don't know. It felt like a lie, when he said it. And he never lies."

"Troy, he loves you. He's been pining over you," Britta said. "He's just had a really tough summer."

"Yeah… yeah I know how that feels." Troy mumbled. He stared down at the ground, and leaned back against the wall.

"So do I…" Britta said with a sigh. She closed the short distance between them, entering his personal space and making him tense and look back up at her. His hands fell out of his pockets and hung limply at his sides. She reached out and grabbed his waist, snaking her arms under the back of his jacket.

"Do you want to come stay over to my place, tonight?" Britta asked in a hopeful whisper, looking into Troy's face. His arms enveloped her, pulling her body closer to his. She could see his desire, his longing.

"I… I really want to. I've missed you a lot…"

"But?" She asked. She thought she did a good job trying to keep the disappointment out of her voice.

"But… I don't want to leave Abed alone. Not the way he's acting. And tonight could be my last night in the blanket fort."

Britta could understand his motivations. Abed was his best friend, and besides that, he'd had to sleep in a strange, lonely place for close to three months. Home, after all that time, would be a huge comfort to him.

But that understanding didn't make the ache in her womb go away. So she pushed down all her doubts, her fears that their time apart had somehow changed things between them, the feeling that had still not gone away that their little affair was somehow illicit, and said:

"Well then I guess we'll just have to fuck right here then, won't we?" There was none of the giggly flintiness to her words now that had characterized their interactions all year. No shy looks from across the study room table. No blush to her cheeks. Just an expression of the want she had been carrying around all summer long.

By his reaction, she was surer than ever that he had been carrying it around with him too. At first he gave a nervous little laugh as if she'd been joking. His smile faded, slowly, as she steadily kept his gaze, a look of sheer hunger replacing it. He grabbed her hips and spun her, trapping her between himself and the back wall of the Ballroom.

#

"I can't believe we just did that…" Troy said, his voice tired but light. He slowly let her slide down the wall and back onto her one shod foot.

"Me neither," she giggled again. _Wow, Britta, way to act like you're older than fifteen_, she admonished herself. "If I'd known, I would have worn a skirt," she said, pulling her pants back on while she balanced against the wall.

He laughed, zipping his fly. "What should I do with, uh-?" He held up the used condom.

"Just toss it in the dumpster, it'll be fine. Pass me my sock?" she asked, pointing to where it had fallen in the aftermath of her mad scramble to get her pants off.

He passed it to her, and stood watching as she pulled it back onto her foot. "Britta… we should probably talk…"

"What?" Her head snapped up from her shoe laces as she looked at him with alarm.

"-about what we tell the group!" he added quickly, his eyes filling with concern. "I mean-" he looked sheepish "-there's no way they're not going to be able to tell what we did, when we go back in."

"Oh, right. Duh doy." Britta said, reddening and looking away from him. _Jesus Christ, Perry, get a hold of yourself_. He was right, of course, they probably reeked of sex. She was still feeling warm, despite the cool weather, and she hadn't been the one straining to lift another human being in her arms.

"Britta…" he said, approaching her. He must have heard the panic in her voice, have guessed at the sheer terror that had welled up in her, and why. Her blush deepened. She suddenly felt more naked now, fully clothed, than she had half-naked and tight around him. She felt tears well up out of nowhere.

"Hey…" he said softly, turning her face to his. She wiped her eyes.

"Sorry," she said. "God. Crying after sex like some kind of Cosmo reading teeny bopper. I'm the wor-"

Troy kissed her. It was slow, deliberate, but held no less heat then the more frantic ones they'd shared that night. Muscles she hadn't even realized that she had tensed relaxed. She felt a whimper rise up out of her throat. He pulled her into him, swallowing her body in his embrace.

He broke the kiss and put his lips to her ear.

"It's alright. I'm not going anywhere. I will continue to be here for you, Britta Perry, in whatever way, shape or form you'll have me."

She felt a tear trickle down her cheek and she sniffed noisily.

"But if we can keep having sex too that would be rad."

She laughed. It sounded phlegmy and hoarse, but it made her feel better.

"I really did miss you, you know," she whispered back.

"I know you did. I missed you too." He gripped her more tightly for a moment, and then stepped away.

"Well. It's only going to get more awkward the longer we wait. Should we face the music?" he asked

"Shirley already knows. I, uh, kinda told her. Accidently." Britta ground her heel against the floor of the alley.

"Oh… Well that explains why she was acting kinda weird earlier." Troy said, looking thoughtful. "Everything cool? With her, I mean."

"Yeah. I'm kinda glad I told her, actually. She's been really supportive. You know. In coping… with you leaving."

Troy smiled. "She's a good friend."

"And I think Abed knows too. Just based on what he was saying after he talked to you."

"Yeah, he's pretty sharp. I wouldn't be surprised if he suspected already, even before we almost made out in front of him back in the bar. And, you know, Annie was pretty hot to put us together earlier in the year… maybe this won't actually be that huge of a deal after all!" He looked hopeful.

Britta thought of Jeff, and her stomach tightened. "Yeah…"

#

As it turned out, Pierce was the only one left in the bar.

"They all left me!" he thundered, drunkenly.

"Okay, slow down Pierce." Troy said. "Where'd they go?"

They were back at their original table. No one had said anything to them when they re-entered the building, but the bartender had given Britta a friendly smile when she saw her come back in with Troy.

"Annie started crying about something or other and wanted to get out of here but A-bed had had a few so Shirley told me to wait here for you two jerks to show up and drove them both home." Pierce did not look happy at having been left alone.

"What about Jeff?" Britta asked, looking around in embarrassment. Pierce was being really, really loud, and some of the other patrons were starting to look over at them.

"Who?" Pierce asked, his eyes crossing as he tried to look at her.

"Jesus Pierce you really overdid it," Troy said, looking concerned.

"They left me! And then you guys made me wait for so long! What else was I supposed to do?" Britta was starting to feel genuinely bad for the old man.

"Pierce, I'm sorry we –uh- talked for so long outside. We didn't know the others had left," she said, trying to placate him.

His expression stayed angry for a moment, then he blinked a couple of times. After that he just looked sleepy. "Ts'okay" he half murmured, half burped.

Britta turned, hiding her mouth from Pierce so she could whisper to Troy: "Maybe we got away with it after all."

"I'll drive you home, Pierce. Come on," Troy grabbed the older man under the shoulders and lifted him up out of his chair.

On their way out, Pierce turned to Troy and said in what he must have assumed was a whisper but in actuality was a near shout:

"Pssst! Troy! Nice work with medium boobs buddy. I hope you remembered my advice."

Britta palmed her forehead. She could not think of a grosser way to be proven wrong.


	3. Troy and Annie go to IKEA

_A/N: The italicized part of this chapter is a flashback (hopefully that's obvious without me needing to say) that I'd originally intended to be a one-off fic as part of a lead-up to this longer story. I ended up getting impatient to write Studies of Resonate Bodies, and decided just to work these into the main story in the way of flashbacks. I might even go farther and do flashbacks to seasons 1, 2, and further back into 3. Hopefully it's not too inorganic._

_Thanks to my anonymous reviewers! I've really wanted to see more Troy/Britta fanfiction too! I'm hoping this one will inspire other people who like this ship to write stories of their own._

_DI4W- Thanks for the kind words. About J/B: I hope you give me a chance to make my case for there still being heat to this ship. I think the way I've written it so far is pretty in line with the canon, but I guess that will be up to you to decide for yourself._

_Draven- Thanks to you too. Like I said, I feel kind of insecure about writing sex scenes, so I'm glad you liked it. There will be more before this story is done, and hopefully you'll like those too._

Annie took a deep sip of her lingonberry drink as she watched Troy dollop an extra portion of Swedish Meatballs onto his tray.

"So what happened last night, anyway?" Troy asked her, "Everyone was asleep by the time I got home."

"Oh, God," she said, rubbing her forehead in embarrassment, "I don't want to talk about it. Let's just say I was feeling a little too celebratory and overdid it. I hope I didn't ruin your night."

She'd been trying to put what had happened out of her mind all day. The hangover she'd had when she woke up hadn't made that easy, but the less she thought of how she'd embarrassed herself with Jeff, the better.

"Are you kidding? I had the night of my life. Well… except for Abed deciding to kick me out of the blanket fort…" he said, ending on a dejected note.

They sat down at a free table in the IKEA cafeteria.

Troy had told her about Abed's decision earlier that day, shortly after she had woken up. She'd helped them "dismantle" the Dreamotrorium, which really meant she'd helped Abed peel the yellow tape off the wall and dispose of its "inner machinery". Even if she had rolled her eyes a bit at how serious her roommates had acted about the event, even she felt it was a bit like the end of an era.

Britta had shown up partway through, eager to help Troy move into his new room. The four of them had spent the early part of the day painting, changing the color of the walls from black to a more appropriate sky blue. Things had been a little bit tense between Troy and Abed at first, but soon they were laughing and joking like Troy had never left in the first place.

She'd watched the way Troy and Britta moved around each other throughout the day, the way he slid his hand across the small of her back as she squeezed past him while they were painting. The connection that they'd developed over the course of the last year hadn't faded with time, Annie had noted happily. It felt good, seeing them together. Troy's current sadness took away from that a little bit, which made Annie feel bad.

"Don't look at it that way, Troy!" she told him, "Abed'd never reject you. He barely left the apartment while you were gone. He loves you."

"Then why is he pushing me away!" he demanded. "And why did he want to get rid of the Dreamotorium? Doesn't he want to play with me anymore?"

"Oh Troy…" Annie sighed. It hurt her to see him like this, but she didn't know what to tell him. Abed was still so much of a mystery to her in so many ways. "I know you guys will work it out. You're Troy and Abed!"

He didn't look convinced, but restrained himself. "Sorry. I shouldn't be dumping all this on you."

"Hey!" she said. "I'm your friend. And Abed's friend too! Carrying your burdens is part of the deal."

"Thanks, Annie," he said, smiling his toothy grin at her, "You're a good friend. I'm glad we're roommates again."

Annie felt a smile of her own break out across her face. She'd missed this, the sweetness of him. She could have used that this summer. Abed could be sweet too, usually, in his own subtle way, but with Troy gone…

Her phone buzzed.

"Ooooh! That girl on Craigslist from Riverside Falls got back to me. Think we can swing by to pick up that dresser I showed you?" she asked, looking at her phone.

"Yeah, it should fit in the back of Shirley's station wagon, I think, even with the stuff we bought here," Troy answered before chomping a meatball in half. "I didn't mean to bring things down before, with all that Abed stuff. I'm just… worried about him."

"I am too…" Annie said, staring off past Troy, "I am too."

#

"_Abed, I'm going to make some buttered noodles. Do you want some?" Annie called from the kitchen. She tried to keep her voice even, to keep the worry that was eating away at her out of it._

"_No," came a curt voice from inside the blanket fort._

_It'd been four days since Troy had left for the A/C annex. Annie had been asking this question, or ones like it, with a greater and greater sense of urgency since then._

_Making her way out of the kitchen, she pushed her head inside the blanket fort. Abed was lying there on the bottom bunk, staring up at the wooden backing of the bed above him. He was still wearing the same gray and red jacket and "BEAST WRECK" T-shirt he'd been wearing when Troy had told him goodbye._

"_Abed…" she said, a pleading note entering her voice._

"_I'm not hungry." He said, his voice monotone._

"_You haven't eaten all day!" she cried, her voice breaking. She couldn't stand to see him like this. To someone who didn't know him very well, Abed might have seemed like his normal self: aloof, distant, slightly weird. But Annie knew, could see it in the way he held himself a little less erect, could hear it in the slight edge of despair just twisting in the edges of his voice, could smell it in the way he'd let his normally impeccable hygiene lapse, could feel it in the way he pulled away from her touch when he'd sought it out before. She knew he was in a state of total despair. "The last time I saw you eat was two days ago, and that was a bag of Cheetos. Abed-" He'd rolled over, turning his back to her and she felt tears well up "-you're scaring me."_

_She saw his back stiffen, and she covered her mouth to hide a sob as tears poured down her face. She turned and pulled open the blanket fort's front curtain, unable to stay in the same room as him._

"_Annie," Abed suddenly called. She stopped. His voice sounded choked. "I- Yes, please."_

"_What?" she asked, her voice a hoarse whisper as she tried not to cry out in front of him again. He didn't need to deal with Crazy Annie right now, on top of everything else._

"_Yes, please. I'd like some buttered noodles."_

_She looked back at him. He'd shifted onto his other side, and was staring at her. She could see the moisture in his eyes, the look of pain._

"_Alright," she said, sniffing. "It'll be about ten minutes, okay?"_

"_No…" he said, getting up. "No, let me help you."_

_He stiffened in surprise when she threw her arms around him as he got close. Annie felt the tears flow freely down her face as she hugged him, unable to control herself. Slowly, his arms came up and encircled her, increasing in pressure until he was squeezing her so tightly she had a little trouble breathing. She felt him shake, violently, and then he burst into tears of his own, long, heavy sobs racking his tall body. They wept together, in shared loneliness and frustration._

_Afterwards they'd made a meal together, and ate in relative silence. Neither of them mentioned Troy by name, but Abed made sure to eat with her on a regular basis after that._

#

Troy had been right about the dresser fitting in the back of the car. Money had exchanged hands between him and the woman from craigslist, who, despite Troy's fears, turned out not to be a crazy rapist cannibal. They'd made their way back to the highway in Shirley's old station wagon, headed back to Greendale.

"I really appreciate your help with all this stuff Annie," Troy said after a period of silence. "Interior decoration is not really my thing."

"It's my pleasure," she said, genuinely. "Aren't you at all excited about getting your own room, Troy, even a little?"

Troy looked thoughtful for a moment.

"It is pretty sweet to have actual walls again, I guess, and the pillow fort could get a little cramped. Plus the privacy will be nice for when Briiiiiiiiiiiii-" he stopped, his eyes widening as he seemed to suddenly remember who he was talking to. "Uh, I MEAN, FOR WHEN I WANT TO **BRIIIIIII**NG MYSELF TO ORGASM, ALONE, WITH NO ONE ELSE IN THE ROOM."

"Oooookay…" Annie said slowly.

Troy winced and shook his head, seemingly at himself.

" So… Troy," Annie asked, her voice casual, pretending to change the subject, "How are things with Britta?"

"I don't know what you're referring to, Annie," he squeaked. He started to rock back and forth in the passenger side seat.

"Troy, I think you might be trying to hide something from me," she accused in a sweet, childlike voice.

He broke, suddenly, his words bursting out like water rushing from a broken dam: "BRITTA AND I HAD SEX OUTSIDE THE BALLROOM LAST NIGHT FIRST I FINGERED HER AND THEN WE DID IT STANDING UP AND IT WAS AWESOME!"

"Oh, Troy, gross!" Annie shrieked. "I didn't want to know that much!"

"THEN WHY DID YOU INTERROGATE ME SO HARSHLY? YOU'RE JUST LIKE THAT ONE LADY ON THE CLOSER!" he cried.

"I cannot believe your guys' first time was in the alley behind some dive bar!" That wasn't how she'd pictured it at all!

"Hey!" he said, sounding a little hurt. "Don't make it sound so seedy! And anyway, it wasn't our first tiiiiiiiiiii- fuck."

Annie shot him a quick look of triumph, before returning her eyes to the road.

"You ARE like that lady in The Closer!" Troy said.

"You guys started seeing each other before the summer? Tell me, tell me, tell me!" she demanded, her voice bubbling with barely contained excitement.

"Alright, fine!" Troy said, but he sounded more relieved than anything. "It started about a week and a half before I had to leave. It'd been building for a while before that though, I guess. I mean, you saw it right? You're the one who pushed us to go on that lunch date at Senior Kevin's."

"It… might have been a little bit obvious," she said.

"Look, don't tell anyone, okay?" he asked. "We're still, I don't know, feeling things out. Where the group's concerned."

"I'm not going to tell anybody," she assured him.

"And especially don't tell Britta I told you."

"Relax Troy, gosh," she said, her tone light and teasing. "I'm not you. I know how to keep a secret."

He smirked.

"I'm really glad you're back, Troy," she said, letting go of the wheel with one hand to grab his.

"Thanks, Annie. I am too."

They were quiet for a while, after that.


	4. Sandwiches, booze, and heartache

_A/N: Sorry for the delay, holiday stuff meant I was farther behind on editing then I wanted to be. Thanks again to all my anonymous reviewers. I like it when you guys chime in! More people should do it. Go ahead, I won't bite! Go ahead and be critical too, I might not always agree with people's interpretations of characters but the feedback on how people think I'm handling them is pretty valuable._

Shirley stood in the empty kiosk that Subway had abandoned. She saw potential here, in the bare brown walls. She reached out to run her hand against the nearest one, saying another prayer of thanks that after a long road she'd finally gotten here. A place to build.

She looked out through the opening to the cafeteria, where Pierce was talking with the man from the construction company they'd called. They had a set of blueprints laid on the table in front of them.

"Yeah, I think we can manage this Mr. Hawthorne," the man was saying, "We can get you guys good to go by the 14th."

"Great, great," Pierce said, rubbing his hands together eagerly. "I can't wait to see that asshole Subway's face when he sees 'Shirley's Sandwiches' spelled out over what used to be his precious little shop."

"I'm… sorry?" the man asked, confused.

"Don't worry about him, Charley," Shirley interjected, walking out of the kiosk over to them. She turned to her business partner. "Pierce, Subway pulled out when the company did. He's not coming back to Greendale this year."

"What!" Pierce looked crushed.

"Whoop whoop!" rang out a voice from across the cafeteria. "Guess who just aced her final?"

"Britta!" Shirley cried with joy as her friend danced over, her arms splayed downward at an awkward angle. She pumped them up and down as she skipped from one foot to the other.

"What the hell are you doing?" Pierce demanded.

Britta stopped, looking hurt. "I'm doing my 'I aced my final dance.'" She repeated the pumping motion. "See! I look like an A."

"You look like a spastic!"

"Pierce!" Shirley shouted, slapping him on the arm. Charley from the construction company looked away, reaching up to scratch his head.

"You know what Pierce?" Britta asked, her voice hardening. "I just got my very first non-fake-maritime A in a class, ever, and I am not going to let your negativity stop me from celebrating that."

"Good for you girl!" Shirley told her. Britta smiled at her, before starting as her cell phone buzzed in her purse.

"So, Mrs. Bennett…" Charley said suddenly.

"Oh I'm sorry Charley, I got distracted. And call me Shirley pumpkin," she said, turning to him. Britta took a seat, her face buried in her cell phone.

"It's no problem, Shirley." Charley said, smiling. "We're going to start work this weekend, if you or Mr. Hawthorne wanted to stop by to supervise."

"I might, but I've got a lot of work to do before we open and I've only got a week and a half to set up a supply chain and hire employees and half a dozen other things." Shirley felt her heart start to race as she began planning out her next move. The thrill of it was starting to catch up with her again. "I already did a lot of the groundwork when I made the original business proposal, but that was months ago."

"I'll definitely stop by." Pierce said brightly. He'd seemed quite taken with the younger man. "You know what, Charles; you should come out drinking with me and my brother tonight. Have you ever heard of a place called Skeeper's?" He put his arm over Charley's shoulder and led him away from Shirley and Britta, and out of the cafeteria.

"Sorry about that, Britta," Shirley said, turning to face where her friend was sitting. "Just so much work to do, you know? Congratulations on the final though, pumpkin, I'm really-"

Britta was staring down at her cell phone with a big, dumb grin on her face. Her cheeks were reddening, and she was gently worrying her lower lip. She hadn't looked up at Shirley at all.

"Britta?" Shirley asked, a little louder. The blonde's head snapped up, her blush deepening as a look of surprise replaced her smile.

"Huh? Oh, sorry Shirley. Uh, just… busy texting." She punched a quick message into her phone and then placed it face down on the table in front of her. "What's up?"

Shirley looked behind her quickly to make sure that Pierce and Charley (mostly just the former) were out of earshot, and then leaned in conspiratorially. "So? I take it things went well with Troy last night?" she asked.

Britta's smile returned, a bit more wistful now, as she stared off somewhere into the distance. "Yeah things… things went pretty great."

Shirley grinned, laughing and clapping her hands together. She'd prayed so hard for her friend all summer, asking God to do something to help Britta the pain of her loss. And He'd listened. And now they both had what they wanted.

"I'm so happy for you pumpkin." Shirley said, hugging her.

"I'm sorry we bolted on you guys last night." Britta said into her shoulder as she hugged her back. "We really didn't have any idea you guys were gonna leave so soon."

Shirley pulled back. "Oh sweetie, don't worry about it. It was getting late by then anyway."

"What happened? Pierce said something about Annie crying?" Britta asked, her expression curious.

"Oh… she…" Shirley's mind raced. "She had a little too much to drink. Pierce really shouldn't have embarrassed her like that by telling you! I'll have to have a talk with him…"

"Oh no, don't Shirley really." Britta said quickly. "I think he was just acting out. He seemed mad that you guys left without him."

Shirley sighed. She'd told that old fool to come with her…

#

"_No, Pierce, you __cannot__ design the employee uniforms," Shirley said, trying to stay calm._

"_Why not!" he demanded. He downed the rest of his drink in one long drain, smacking his lips noisily._

"_Well, for starters," Abed interjected, "I'm pretty sure what you just described violates multiple GCC bylaws, not to mention state and federal anti-harassment laws."_

"_Pah! Big government squashing the dynamism of the market!"_

_Shirley sighed, and tried to think about the sandwich shop. They'd only been partners for six hours and Pierce already had her praying to the Lord for patience. She liked to think He sent Abed over here. She probably would have murdered Pierce already if he hadn't sat down next to them._

"_If you don't want to listen to my ideas, fine!" Pierce said, "But we've got to start making plans now, Shirley. The Fall semester starts in what… two weeks? Less than that. Think of all that revenue we're losing out on everyday we're not open."_

_And then he had to go and say something sensible, just to keep her on her toes. She was being tested, she knew it._

"_That's not a bad point…" she said slowly._

"_I'll make some calls; see if I can find a construction company that's ready to work short notice." Pierce said. "It shouldn't be too hard to-"_

_A shouting voice rang out over near the bar, its words indistinct over the noise of the crowded room. Shirley thought the voice sounded like… Jeff? She turned around in her chair to look, along with, apparently, every other patron in the Ballroom because a sudden silence fell._

_Jeff was standing, his body tense, the barstool Shirley had seen him sitting in earlier lying at the floor near his feet. He was staring with a shocked expression over at Annie, who still sat in her stool, recoiling away from him as if she'd just been shocked with a taser. Jeff looked around at the people staring at them, and turned and bolted out the door._

_Annie let out a long, shuddering wail before devolving into tears._

"_Oh, Annie!" Shirley cried, getting up and rushing over to her. Abed, moving with a speed and determination that Shirley wouldn't have normally associated with him, beat her there, and wrapped his arms around Annie as she devolved further into hysterics. She pressed her face into his chest, her tears wetting his shirt as she sobbed openly and drunkenly._

"_Look after her!" she told him, but he didn't seem to hear her as he softly stroked Annie's hair._

_Shirley went to look for Jeff._

_#_

_She found him out in the parking lot, pacing franticly back and forth._

"_Jeffery Winger!" she shouted, anger raging inside her. "What in the hell is wrong with you?"_

_He wheeled on her, his features creased with guilt and shame. She felt her anger retreat a little at the intensity she saw there in his face. She'd rarely seen him this upset._

"_Jeff?" she asked in a softer voice. "What happened?"_

"_I don't- I didn't mean to-" He swallowed. Jeff Winger was apparently at a loss for words._

"_Are you alright?" Shirley asked, growing truly concerned. Usually he'd at least have some clever quip or line to try that she'd have to work past to get at was really bothering him, but now that seemed beyond him._

_He laughed in a high voice, his eyes crinkling around the edges. Then he turned, doubling over and vomiting all over the asphalt._

"_Lord, Jeff, how much did you drink?" she asked as she reached over and rubbed his back._

"_Just two scotches," he answered in a hoarse voice, and the clarity of his speech told her he wasn't lying. "I can't face her right now, Shirley. I __can't__."_

"_She's crying her eyes out in there Jeff!" Shirley said. She no longer pretended not to know, or at least strongly suspect, exactly what had happened between Annie and him._

"_I'd just make it worse. The last thing she needs right now is more of me, trust me," he said spitting to clean the taste of throw up from his mouth and straightening. "I'll call a cab."_

_Shirley debated with herself for a moment. Jeff was pretty shaken up, and she was fairly sure Annie had had much, much more to drink than he had. They'd probably both be better off talking when they were clearer-headed. And what could she do? She couldn't force Jeff to go in and apologize. That'd just make more of a scene. And she didn't even know if Annie wanted to see him right now._

"_Fine," she said. "I'll just go back in and deal with the 21 year old you just emotionally devastated. I don't even know where the hell Troy and Britta are, and Abed and Pierce have both had too much to drive. I'll just go and clean this whole mess up, like usual." She turned, still angry, ready to head back into the Ballroom._

"_Shirley," Jeff said quickly, "Don't tell Britta."_

"_What?" Shirley said, rounding on him. "That's what you're worried about right now?"_

"_Shirley, __please__." He looked down at her, and Shirley didn't see the eyes of a 34 year old ex-lawyer. She saw a 10 year old boy with a little rat-tail haircut and a pair of pee-stained pants. He caught himself, regaining a measure of composure. "Think about it. I think Annie'd want you to keep a lid on it too, and if you tell Britta then soon… everyone'd know."_

"_You mean Troy?" Shirley asked. She felt bad, tipping her hand about Britta's relationship like this, but she strongly suspected Jeff already might know. The look he gave her at the mention of the younger man's name didn't help disprove that theory._

"_Alright, Jeff," she said resignedly. Something was going on with him, but he deserved the space to deal with it on his own. He'd earnt that much trust from her. "I won't. But you need to figure out whatever the hell is up with you, because I do not have time to deal with this right now." She left him there, standing alone in the middle of the Ballroom's dark parking lot._

_#_

"_I just want to go home…" Annie said into Abed's chest. She had already stopped crying by the time Shirley had re-entered the bar, and the crowd around her had dispersed. She was not, however, any less drunk._

"_Where's Jeff?" Abed asked Shirley as she rejoined them. He spoke in a cold, quick voice, and he hadn't stopped stroking Annie's hair._

"_He left," she said simply._

"_He just abandoned her like this?" Shirley heard real heat in his voice now._

"_Abed, how much have you had to drink?" Shirley said, changing the subject. The last thing she needed right now was to deal with more emotions and hurt feelings._

_He paused for a moment. "I'm pretty sure I'm over the legal limit. Can you drive us home?"_

"_Pierce!" Shirley called, looking over to their original table where the old man was still drinking. "Come on. I'm driving your drunk ass home."_

"_What?" he cried. "We're leaving already? No, no I'm staying here."_

"_Pierce you are not fit to drive and you told me you don't like riding in cabs because you're convinced all the cab owners are terrorists. Troy and Britta are gone to who knows where. You're coming. With. Me." Her voice was firm and unyielding. She'd taken enough shit from him today._

"_Troy and Britta are outside." Abed interjected. Shirley looked at him with surprise. "They're talking."_

"_Uh huh," she said skeptically. "Well, up to you Pierce. You can wait until they're done 'talking' or you can come with me, but I am not leaving you here with your keys."_

_Being Pierce, he, of course, went with the former option._

#

Shirley shut the front door of her house behind her, sniffing the air. Something spicy and aromatic wafted through it. It smelled delicious. It smelled like Andre's cooking.

"That you, babe?" Andre's voice called. "How'd the meeting go?"

"Great!" Shirley called back, making her way down the front hall and turning into the kitchen. Andre was there, standing over a pot on the stove wearing a red apron that she knew had "KISS THE COOK" spelled out in black letters on the front. Shirley approached Andre, and took its suggestion.

"Eeeeew!" shouted Jordan from the dining room. He was sitting with his older brother at the family table, a schoolbook open in front of him. Right now, though, he was staring at his parents through the hole in the dividing wall between the two rooms with a look of disgust on his face.

"Boy, you better focus more on your homework and less on being a smart-ass or you're not getting any chili," Andre scolded him. He lowered the temperature on the stove and turned to his wife. "Now, baby, tell me how things are going with Shirley's Sandwiches."

"Everything's on schedule for us to open Monday after next, assuming I can get some small details ironed out." Shirley grinned, dancing up and down on her feet. "Oh, Andre, I'm so excited! I can hardly believe it's happening."

Andre beamed at her, reaching out to rub her shoulders. "I gotta say, Shirley, and I know I wasn't always as helpful with this as I shoulda been, but you really stuck it out with this whole business thing. You never gave up, no matter how much discouragement you got. I'm proud of you."

Shirley melted where she stood, her grin deepening as his praise washed over her. She kissed him again, more slowly and on the lips this time, ignoring the cries of protest that erupted from the other room.


	5. Breaking in the new mattress

_A/N: Hey everyone, sorry this chapter took so long. The full version is over 5,000 words long. It's another sex chapter though, so most of that is over on livejournal. To read it, type marrrrrrr (that's ma and 7 rs) dot livejournal dot com slash 2164 dot html into your web browser, or just find a link to my lovejournal page in my profile. I've excised the sexy parts from this version of the chapter, if anyone wants to keep reading without reading erotica. Does anyone do that, actually? I'm curious. Let me know in an anon review, I won't judge._

_I posted this over on the livejournal version, but I just wanted to repeat it here because it needs to be said: Really, really big thanks to MC-Aitlyn on this one. Her reviews are always a delight to read, but she really helped me with this chapter, encouraging me, giving me advice, and most importantly kindly agreeing to take a look at it before I posted it publicly (I was feeling kind of insecure about it)._

_Finally, thanks again to my anonymous reviewers. Sorry for leaving you on a cliffhanger like that (okay I am not really sorry). Answers will come.. I'll try and get the next chapter up quickly, which shouldn't be too hard as I've already written a lot of it._

Troy pushed the last thumbtack into the poster, securing it to the wall. He jumped off the chair he was balancing on and took a few steps back. The poster of Miles Morales, the new Ultimate Spiderman, seemed straight hanging over the red desk he and Annie had bought at IKEA, so he felt satisfied. He wasn't sure what had inspired Marvel to make Spiderman black, but he thought the change worked.

He took a moment took around his newly furnished room. He'd kept the tile flooring, since there was no conceivable way he could afford to get the room carpeted like Annie's was even if the landlord had been cool with it. He'd placed a nice, blue rug under his new bed, so he'd at least have something warm to step on first thing on cold winter mornings. The dresser he'd bought off Craigslist was right next to the closet, which sadly no longer contained the cardboard engine Abed had built for the Dreamatorium. He had a lot more room to store his clothes now, at least. In the blanket fort he'd had to make do with empty cardboard boxes, turned on their sides. And those ended up getting knocked over a lot during pillow fights, which was a pain to have to keep cleaning up.

In addition to the Spiderman one, he'd lined the walls with posters dedicated to some of his favorite bits of popular culture. He'd managed to talk Abed into letting him take one of his Kickpuncher posters, and even though it was for Kickpuncher 2, the most flawed of the movie's sequels, he'd appreciated his friend parting with it. He'd snagged an Inspector Spacetime poster that featured Reggie in a pretty awesome pose at the same store where he'd bought the Spiderman one. He'd also seen a cool looking Blade poster there, but decided against buying it, for obvious reasons.

His phone buzzed suddenly, out in the living room where he had left it. Rushing out to retrieve it, he saw that he had a text message from Britta.

just aced my final! :O

Congrats :) he texted back.

what r u up 2?

Just finishing up my room

is it done? can I see?

Yeah, come on over

There was a slight pause before Britta texted back.

roommates there?

Troy smiled. He had a good idea of where this was going to go. Nope

you break in the new mattress yet?

Troy's smile broadened into a grin. This was an unusually coy text conversation for Britta, so far. Flirting by text had been one of his favorite parts of all the sneaking around that their secret relationship necessitated. Britta could range from the slightly subtle (my cat is sad :( think he wants u 2 cum play with him) to the direct (need some1 2 eat me out, stat), but his favorites were definitely the times where he got a chance to be just as flirtatious.

Nope and I might need a little help

oh? why's that? :p

Got the extra firm one to help with my back

i might be able 2 help with that. what are you wearing?

He paused, stopping to think for a moment. What do you want me to be wearing?

Britta didn't respond again for a moment. Just as Troy started to worry that he'd screwed up, done something too cloying and unsexy, she texted back:

put on that ac school uniform be there in 15

One of Troy's eyebrows quirked up in surprise. He'd been wearing that earlier today, when they'd been painting his new room. He'd already mandated, using his authority as the Truest Repairman, that A/C school students could wear whatever they wanted to class , but had figured that the get-up would make a good set of work clothes. He'd had no idea that it would peak Britta's fancy.

yes maam

#

True to her word, Britta knocked on the door around 15 minutes later. He rushed to the door, and was about to wrench it open when it suddenly occurred to him that he might want to play it slightly more cool. He gave it a couple of beats, and then opened the door as casually and manly as he could manage.

"Oh, hey there Britta," he said, as if he were actually surprised to see it was her, "What's up?"

She rolled her eyes at him, grinning. "You know I could hear you stampede up to the door, right?"

"I- I KNOW!" She pushed past him as he stood there in the doorway, sputtering. She was wearing the same solid green long-sleeved t-shirt and jeans she had been earlier that day, when she'd been helping him. His eyes followed the sway of her hips as she made her way to the door of his new room. The image made him think of what those hips had been doing last night. He followed her, eagerly.

She took a moment on entering to look around, taking the place in. She walked over to the bed and dropped her purse on it, near the headboard.

"I like it. It's very… you." Britta turned back to him. Her smile was different now, still amused, but now in a way that made Troy's loins stir. Her eyes raked him up and down. "You changed for me."

He grinned at the lilt her voice had taken on. "If I'd known the uniform would get me laid, I might have joined the repair school sooner."

Britta laughed as she walked over to him, her hand reaching out to grab the zipper of his jumpsuit. She looked up at him as she played with it idly, her face serious.

"I've been thinking about it, ever since I saw you wearing it the other day. Especially this morning. It made Annie's buzzing around so annoying. I kept having this… fantasy… that you were wearing just it-" she pulled the zipper down with deliberate slowness- "with nothing underneath."

#

"Well…" he said after a while. "I'm definitely going to hold onto that jumpsuit."

She laughed, tiredly. "That was amazing. I mean, I always love fucking you, but… wow."

"Yeah," he said, grinning briefly. "Uh, sorry if that stuff I was saying got a little… weird… towards the end. You know… about…" He didn't want to say his name.

She kissed him gently on the check. "Don't worry about it. It'd be weirder honestly if you weren't at least a little jealous. And besides…" she giggled, "it was really hot."

Troy held her a little tighter. He felt affection swell up inside his chest. He kept leaving himself exposed with her, kept opening up in ways that scared the shit out of him, and she just looked at it, at him, and kept asking for more.

"I love you," he said suddenly. Britta's eyes widened, her mouth opening in surprise. _Shit._ He winced.

"Sorry, that was way too soon wasn't it? Especially after that thing I said last night about me not going anywhere. Crap, I really don't want to get all cloying and possessive on you I just-"

Britta put a finger to his lips, silencing him mid-sentence.

"Troy, don't. It's" -she paused, her mouth opening and closing for a moment. "I… It's just hard for me to say it. That thing you said. I've been burnt, a lot, by that word. But that's my problem, not yours, you got that?" Her eyes were large, caring, as they stared into his. He nodded. "Good. Because I'm not going anywhere either, Troy Barnes."

She snuggled up to him, resting her head on his chest. She felt good there, next to him like this. In this bed. Like she fit.


	6. Hill of beans

_A/N: It turns out doesn't like you using angle brackets, which is what I was putting texts in. I'm replacing them with quotes for now but if anyone has any good suggestions for alternatives leave a review or PM me._

"87… 88… 89…" Jeff Winger counted out each push up. His muscles burned, but he pushed past the pain. He would have mastery over his body, at least, even is his mind seemed so far outside of his control.

He stopped at 100, rolling onto his back and staring up at the ceiling as he panted heavily. He wanted to go for another run, to silence the thoughts that threatened to consume him for another couple of miles, but just the thought of more punishment made his calves tighten up painfully.

He wiped a layer of sweat off his forehead, sitting up with a groan. It was no use. His body had won, just as it always did, dragging him down like some kind of leaden anchor. You could win a temporary victory, continue on past that first initial feeling of exhaustion, but the harder you struggled the more crushing your inevitable defeat became.

He stood, slowly, walking into his bathroom. He tore his sweaty exercise shirt off over his head, and studied his body in the mirror for a while. It never made him feel as good as he thought it should.

He removed his shorts, letting them drop to the tile floor, and stepped into the shower. He set the tap as cold as he could stand it and let the freezing geyser of water envelop him, the shock of it making him flinch backwards. It felt good, though. Refreshing. It let him think.

What the hell was wrong with him?

#

_Jeff zipped his pants as he exited the men's room of the Ballroom. His head was buzzing pleasantly in a way that made the world seem slightly brighter and more amusing without really impairing him. He looked down the small corridor that lead back to the bar. Annie was there, waiting for him to come back. He felt his dick stir in his suit pants._

"_Nope," he said down to Winger Jr. Thanks to a combination of the booze, the relief of having finally gotten that Biology credit, and his triumph over Alan today, he might have let his ego get a little bit out of control tonight. His conversation with Annie had already gone way over the line he'd set for himself, and after he'd done such a good job keeping things platonic this summer… Better to give that some space._

_He also felt bad about how pissy he'd gotten at Troy after he'd lost their dart game. He'd known the kid had just gotten back, but that "You Just Lost to Troy!" song was so god damned annoying. He'd half expected to see him in the bathroom, and to be able to apologize to him in there. He'd never come back into the bar after he'd left with Abed, so Jeff had figured he'd stopped to take a leak._

_He looked the other way down the corridor, and saw a metal door there. Maybe he'd wanted to get some air? It couldn't hurt to take a peek. Even if Troy wasn't outside, it'd still give him a little bit of time to collect himself. He walked over and pushed the door open partway, enough to stick his head out into the alley._

_His eyes widened. __**That is not what I want to see**__, he thought immediately. Troy was out there alright, his hand buried in Britta's jeans as she clutched at him. Ecstasy was painted on her face. And the sounds she was making… he hadn't heard those for a long, long time. When she was making them for him, not some snot nosed brat who was barely old enough to drink legally. He realized with a start that he'd been watching them, unmoving, for several moments. He quickly ducked his head back inside. It took every ounce of control he had not to slam the door behind him. Instead, he closed it slowly and silently, before taking several lurching steps backwards._

_His head was ringing. Not from the booze now, he could barely feel that anymore. It felt like someone had stuck a vacuum cleaner onto the top his skull. Everything had a slightly unreal feeling to it, as if he were in a dream. He made his way back into the bar, retaking his seat without really thinking about it. Annie said something as he sat next to her, but he didn't hear it. He couldn't get what he'd just seen out of his mind._

_And he couldn't understand why. He'd tried it with Britta. It didn't work out. They'd argued too often and too heatedly. They made each other stubborn, and unreasonable. The sex had gotten stale. By the end, they were keeping it going just because they liked having a secret. Why, then, did he feel like the world had just opened up under him?_

_Annie rested her hand on his knee, but he barely registered that fact. She was still talking. He wasn't blind. He hadn't missed the little flirtations between Troy and Britta, as shy and hesitant as they were. He'd felt awkward about it, but he'd told himself that it was because he didn't want to see Troy get his heart broken. But it wasn't sympathy he felt for the boy, when he pictured him in his mind now. It was anger, white and hot and bubbling up from the core of his being._

_Annie's hand slid up his leg, coming to rest on his inner thigh. His loins stirred. Jeff started, shocked out his stupor. He grabbed her hand and threw it off him. He felt heat flooding into his face and his focus returned, narrowing with laser like intensity on one question: __**Why the fuck will she not leave me alone?**_

"_Annie!" he shouted. He jumped up out of his seat so quickly that the stool fell, clattering, onto the floor. "How many times do we have to do this until you get the god damn point: I don't want to be your FUCKING BOYFRIEND!"_

_A red tinge that he hadn't even noticed faded from the corners of his vision. Annie looked up at him, tears filling up those huge doe eyes, and he realized what he'd just done. That he'd just taken everything out on her, for no reason beyond the fact that she was there. She looked totally shocked, her hand still halfway extended over to where he'd been sitting._

_He wanted to say something, anything. But he didn't. Instead he turned, and ran out of the Ballroom._

#

"We should talk." It was the first bit of contact he'd tried all day, and it took a supreme effort of willpower to hit the send button. He placed his cell phone in front of him on the kitchen table, face up, and stared at it, unmoving. After what seemed like an eternity, it buzzed.

"About what?" Annie had asked

"Come on."

Another long pause.

"I think you said everything you needed to say last night, didn't you?"

"Please, Annie. I can't apologize like this."

"FINE! Senior Kevin's, half an hour."

A public place. That hurt a little, but he couldn't exactly blame her. Not after the way he'd acted.

"Alright."

#

"How many seats?" the waitress at Senior Kevin's asked him as he approached the service desk. Her dark red hair was pulled into a pony-tail, and she was giving him an inviting smile that hinted that she wanted more than to just serve him reasonably priced Tex-Mex cuisine

"Two, please. I have a friend coming to meet me," he said, giving her nothing. It'd be inappropriate, considering the circumstances.

She showed him to his table, and brought a complimentary basket of tortilla chips. He nibbled on them half-heartedly, but found he wasn't that hungry.

"Can I get a margarita?" he asked the waitress.

The glass was empty and the chips cold by the time Annie showed up, dressed in one of her many cardigan/pencil skirt combos. He half-stood, waving to get her attention. He smiled when she saw him. She didn't.

"I'm glad you came," he told her when she'd made her way over.

"I almost didn't," she answered. She looked agitated, which wasn't making Jeff feel any less uneasy, but took a seat.

"Look-" he started, but their waitress took that moment to show up.

"Can I get you a drink?" she asked Annie. "Any appetizers?"

"No thanks," Annie said, and Jeff could hear the anger in her voice as she shot him a meaningful look. "I don't think I'll be drinking for a while, for some reason."

"Can you just give us a second?" Jeff snapped at the waitress. She retreated, casting a look back at them with a confused look on her face.

"Anyway-" Jeff started.

"I could maybe understand what you did, Jeff, maybe, if you hadn't been flirting with me at least as hard as I was flirting with you," Annie started suddenly.

"I know, and-"

"You may be able to turn that part of yourself on and off like a switch, but I can't, alright?" She folded her arms over her chest. "You use me like I'm some kind of air pump for your ego and then you toss me aside as soon as you don't need me!"

"Okay, that's a little-"

"And you know what the most infuriating part of it is, Jeff?" she asked, her voice rising now, "The most infuriating part is that _I know that I've, known it all along, and yet I keep letting it happen anyway._"

"Annie-"

"I saw you do it to Britta, and then I let you do it to me after she stopped putting up with it! You made me stupider than Britta_,_ Jeff. _Britta!_ Do you have any idea how humiliating that feels?"

"I think-"

"What? What do you think, Jeff? What could you possibly have to say that would make any of this okay?" She stared at him furiously.

His mouth opened, but he didn't have anything. _What can I say? "Oh, sorry, I saw my ex-…whatever Britta and I were… fucking out back and decided to take it out on you?"_

"That's what I thought," Annie said in disgust, reaching to grab her purse from the chair next to her.

"Annie, wait. I'm sorry, alright? I know that can't mean much to you, after the way I treated you, but I really am. And you're right, I've been being unfair to you for a lot longer than just last night. I mean, I think it's a little more emotionally complicated than you were making it seem-"

Annie snorted derisively, but hadn't gotten up.

"I mean it!" he said, hurt. "First off, Britta and I-" his throat closed up as he thought of the blonde, making him stop. _Not right now, fuck face._ "We weren't like that. We may have been dysfunctional as hell, sure, but we ended things on even terms. And she's not stupid, Annie, and neither are you. Take it from a guy who's spent most of his life for avoiding them for this very reason: relationships are messy. They hurt. And not just when sex is involved. We all want things from each other, so many things, and those things are sometimes mutually exclusive. Like when I want to be friends with you, but I also… I don't know… fill my dumb ego up with the validation I get when you flirt with me. But you can understand why that'd get to me right? I mean, look at you Annie. How was I supposed to keep ignoring you, even as you blossomed into this incredible woman sitting in front of me?"

Her expression had softened, and her grip on her purse was a little less firm.

"But you're right. I wasn't fair to you. I tried, really hard, to be. I tried to keep things platonic. Tried to ignore the butterflies in my stomach when you'd shoot me that look. I think I just ended up making it worse. I know that doesn't excuse anything I've done, but… I don't know. That's just… how I feel."

Annie stared at him for a while before she sighed, sadly. "Why does life have to be so stupid?"

Jeff blinked. "Sorry?"

"Nothing. It's just… I hate the way this whole situation makes me feel! So out of control. So angry. But that just makes me feel more angry!" She slid down in her chair, breaking her normally impeccable posture. "Why can't we just be friends? Why do dumb hormones have to keep entering into everything?"

Jeff smiled. "Well, if they didn't, we'd have stopped having babies millennia ago. Plus, life would probably be a lot more dull."

"Dull sounds good. Dull sounds like Paradise." Annie blew a strand of hair out of her face.

"I don't know if I can deliver Paradise, Annie. If I knew how to get there, I sure as hell wouldn't be at Greendale. How about this? I'll buy you a burrito and promise to try harder on the whole 'platonic friendship' thing, and we go on from there. Deal?"

The beginnings of a smile teased at the corners of Annie's mouth. "It sounds like a start." She opened her menu.

Jeff got the waitresses attention, hoping she wouldn't hold a grudge. He didn't want spit in his food.

#

"Wait, Troy's got his own room now?" Jeff asked, surprised. Their meal had been going well, surprisingly so. Things had been tense at first, but clearing the air between them had helped a lot. Jeff, no longer obsessed with not thinking of Annie as a sexual object, was able to relax and appreciate her for the smart, funny woman she was. They hadn't been able to talk like this, so openly and freely, in a long time.

"Yeah! Sorry. I forget sometimes that not everyone lives in Casa de Trobed." She took a sip of her soda. "We've been helping him move all day."

"Troy and Abed, sleeping in different beds?" Jeff leaned back. He was a little shocked. He hadn't seen much of Abed over the summer, save for those times when the study group met at his and Annie's, and there had been that weird thing he said yesterday about sawing off his arm… Maybe he needed to pay a little more attention to his friend. "That just seems so… sad."

"Don't make fun!" Annie scolded him.

"I'm not!" he said defensively. "I'm being genuine! It does seem sad."

Annie's eyes took on a faraway look. "It does, doesn't it?"

Now he just felt bad for brining her down, so he changed the subject. "So, you and Abed helped Troy set up his new room?"

Annie perked up a little. "Yeah! Well, and Britta, until she had to go study for her final. Troy and I drove to IKEA after-"

Jeff only half-paid attention to her story of their visit to the Swedish furniture chain. His heart had started beating quickly in his chest at the mention of her name. He felt angry with himself for his reaction, but that didn't do anything to hold back the tidal wave of emotions he felt when he thought of her, alone, with Troy in that room that he already hated deep inside his heart.

"-and then you know what he told me?" He snapped to attention suddenly, surprised that Annie hadn't complained about his not paying attention sooner. She was idly mashing a pile of beans she'd made on her plate with her fork as she looked at him, expectantly.

"What?" he asked. He assumed she was still talking about Troy.

"He said that he and Britta have been having sex since last year!" Annie was still working her fork into the pile of beans, which by now had been demolished beyond all recognition. Not seeming to notice, Annie was squelching them faster and faster. "I mean, can you believe that?"

"Annie..?" Jeff asked slowly, distracted from his own problems by the younger woman's odd behavior. "Two quick questions: what exactly did those beans do to you, and don't you think they've learned their lesson by now?"

Annie blinked several times, and then looked down at her plate. She reddened, darkly and instantly.

"Oh my God!" she shrieked, looking back up at him with alarm in her eyes. "Why did I just tell you that? Oh God! I promised I wouldn't tell anyone! What's wrong with me?"

Jeff laughed. He tried to hold it in, but he couldn't.

"This isn't funny!" Annie shouted her face still red. She seemed to stop and consider her words for a moment, then burst into a sudden fit of giggles.

Knowing that he wasn't the only crazy person on this planet actually made him feel a whole lot better, he thought as he and Annie fell further into hysterics. Their poor, put upon waitress seemed like she didn't know what to do when she came by a few moments later to take away their dirty plates. He couldn't blame her. Neither did he.


	7. Britta Bot

**A/N: I'm bolding this Author's Note just to make it stand out more, since I opened this chapter with a flashback. That flashback was actually inspired by a piece of fanart I saw a while ago, called "Britta Bot" by Znuese. I'd link it but this site doesn't like that. It really touched my little shipper heart. Google it, and buy prints or posters of it or whatever because it's really nice looking.**

**Thanks again to all the anonymous reviewers who I can't PM. It's good to get feedback, even if it's just someone saying they like the story.**

_Britta Perry sat, sniffling, on the stairs to the side of the library entrance, the part that was bathed in shadow because the lights didn't quite cover it. The tears had stopped flowing a little while ago, but she didn't feel any less like shit. She shivered from the cold Colorado winter that her sweater was doin g a terrible job of insulating her from. She felt no desire to go inside, into the warmth. She deserved this._

_She snapped to attention suddenly as she heard the library's double doors her slam open. Thinking quickly, she ducked behind a nearby pillar. She heard the sounds of a scuffle, and raised voices._

"_You stay away from him!" she heard Troy shout, "He doesn't want your 'help.'" Britta shrunk down into herself, trying not to breath. She knew she should have gone home. Now she had to listen to her spectacularly bad idea to help Abed with his delusion explode right in front of her._

"_Yeah!" Annie agreed. Britta couldn't see either of them, but she could imagine their faces, lit up with the assurance that came from knowing they were good friends. Good people. Not like her. "Abed is going to figure the meaning of Christmas out on his own!"_

"_I am a Professor!" she heard Duncan shout. She should have known he was too selfish and arrogant to have any chance of helping her friend. She should have known that about herself, too, come to think of it. "You cannot treat me this way you delinquent! I will be reporting this to the Dean immediately. And you! There __is__ no meaning of Christmas you dumb cunt!"_

"_Dude!" Troy said, warningly. Annie gasped._

_Duncan paused before starting up again, and his tone was much less firm now. "Okay, look, that's a far less loaded word in my country." Britta heard the fear in his voice and she felt herself grin in spite of her current mood. "And really, isn't that just indicative of you American's greater level of uncomfortability with female sexuality as compared to England?"_

"_I'm sure the Dean would love to have that discussion with you," Annie said. Britta could recognize that tone, it was the one used when Annie was getting really dangerous. "Of course, I imagine it'd be in the context of a full sexual harassment investigation and you might not want to-"_

"_Okay, okay, fine, I get the point. You're blackmailing me. Nicely done Ms. Edison, I guess ruining the Duncan Principle wasn't enough for you." He paused again. "Okay, I really don't see any possible way to exit this conversation with my dignity intact, so…" She heard the sound of running footsteps, and soon the sight of Ian Duncan, jogging away across the quad, came into view. He didn't see her, thankfully. That asshole already knew too much about her already._

"_Should we go back in there?" Annie asked after a moment._

"_I don't know," Troy answered slowly. "Professor Duncan was right about one thing: I don't think Abed's problems have anything to do with the North Pole. You heard what he was saying on the train."_

"_He misses his mom…" Annie said, her voice trailing off sadly._

"_Yeah exactly." Britta felt her cheeks burn with shame. She had no business listening in on this. Abed had kicked her out of the Study Room specifically because he didn't trust her. "I think he needs us right now, but all of us. I think we should get the rest of the group."_

"_Troy? Are you sure?" Annie sounded worried. "He ejected them from Winter Wonderland. Well, I guess Pierce kind of just wandered off, but still…"_

"_Abed doesn't always know what's best, especially right now. He's hurting Annie! I know you saw that in there."_

"_I did…" Annie answered. "Alright. You're right, Troy, we're the closest thing to a family he's got. What's the plan?"_

"_You go find Shirley and Jeff, they probably left campus already and you've got a car. I'll find Britta and figure out where Pierce disappeared to, and we'll meet back here, in front of the library."_

_They were going to look for her? After what Abed had said? After how badly she'd betrayed him?_

_She heard Annie run off towards the parking lot, her shoes clopping off into the distance. She wondered for a moment what Troy was doing, and whether she should try and make a break for it now, when her cell phone suddenly started playing "Don't Stand So Close to Me" by the Police. Troy's ringtone._

_She fumbled for it in her purse and furiously mashed the mute button, but the damage was done. Troy's head popped around the corner of her pillar. "Britta?" he asked, a confused frown etched on his face._

"_Hey Troy," she said, hating the way her voice sounded raw and crackly. She tried to think up a good reason why she was standing here, awkwardly hiding behind a pillar, but couldn't. She tried to force her body language to broadcast something, anything else, besides "despondent idiot", but failed there as well. She saw his expression soften._

"_Sorry I didn't realize you were-" he paused as she sniffed noisily again. "Britta, are you-"_

_She tried not to cry. She put every last ounce of willpower she had behind that command to her body: Do Not Show Weakness. It didn't listen. She felt her face twist, the tears well up in her eyes, the deep shuddering shake of her breath as it wailed out her throat._

"_God, Britta!" he said, the concern in his voice a punch to her gut. He came around the pillar to her side, folding her into a deep hug. "Don't cry!"_

_She knew she didn't deserve his sympathy, but couldn't exactly shove him away. What good would that do, except make him feel bad? And he felt so warm... So he held her, gently rubbing her back as she sobbed into his nice red sweater._

"_It's okay." He said. "It's okay. I know. What Abed said in there was really harsh."_

_She pulled away, looking up at him in surprise. "No, it wasn't. Abed was right. I'm a dumb, broken robot who hates anyone who commits the unbelievable sin of having faith in me. And I'm never going to change."_

"_Britta, that's not true at all! Here, come on, let's sit down." Troy led her back to the stairs, to a part lit by a patch of light this time, and they sat down next to each other. He laid a comforting arm over her shoulder. "I know Abed's a smart guy, and it seems like he's always on the ball about everything. But he's not. He might seem sometimes like he doesn't have a temper, or get stubborn, or things like that, but he does. Sometimes more than most people."_

"_Just because he was angry with me doesn't mean he wasn't right," Britta said._

"_But he wasn't! You've got faith in your friends falling out of your butt, Britta! You're the one who knew that we were the ones who could help Abed, that insisted to the Dean that Duncan should hold a __group__ therapy session for him. I mean, yeah, you really shouldn't have tried to trick him into it, he never responds well to that…" He reached out, and grabbed her hand. "But that's stuff just details. The point is: you had faith in all of us, in our friendship."_

"_Troy, I appreciate you trying to cheer me up, but…"_

"_I know! He seems like he can see right through you sometimes… but… but…" Troy sounded frustrated. He exhaled. "I mean, you don't think I'm just a tin soldier, do you?"_

_Britta was surprised by the question. She'd been so myopically focused on herself, she hadn't even really thought about the implications of Abed's label for Troy. "What do you mean?"_

"_That I'm just some little figurine, all dressed up in finery, ready to be taken out of a box to be played with and drum my little toy drum, but totally useless beyond that. That all I'm good for is following someone else's orders? Or… or throwing a football?" His voice faltered towards the end, surprising Britta a little. She hadn't really associated Troy with this kind of pain, in her mind._

"_Troy, of course not!" She squeezed his hand. "You're so much more than that! You're caring, and funny, and… and you were the one who took charge and got everyone home safe, last week, at the Ballroom! Even though it was your birthday, and we should have been looking after you." She'd been avoiding eye contact up to now, not wanting him to see how puffy and red her eyes were, but she gazed into his face now, saw the real pain and fear there. Saw that he'd let her into something deep, something he didn't normally let people see. "And I could never think you were just some dumb jock... not after the way we danced together. At, at that recital I mean." She felt herself flush, just a little, and hoped he'd just chalk it up to the cold weather._

"_See!" Troy said triumphantly. "That's how I know Abed's wrong about you. It was you having faith in me that got me up on that stage in the first place. That faith you had that I was a dancer. That I could be more than just what people saw."_

_Britta felt something stir in her then. Not lust. She'd gotten used to dealing with those kinds of feelings about Troy by now. No, this was something deeper, more affectionate and fundamental._

"_You know, I thought you were going to be angry? That I'd have to talk you into coming back and helping Abed, after what he'd said to you? But you've been crying your eyes out because of how much pain __he's__ in, this whole time. You have faith in your friends, Britta. Maybe not in yourself, maybe you've got to work on that, but then again who doesn't? That's why we have friends in the first place. We've got you and you've got us. You've… you've got me."_

_Britta hugged him again. "Thanks Troy," she whispered, a tear rolling down her cheek._

_So the toy soldier sat there, comforting the sad, broken robot until she didn't feel quite so sad. Until that feeling the robot had felt was strong enough to let her get up and help their friend. The robot would keep that feeling alive over the next year and a half inside her, feel it grow and strengthen. She'd reflect on it, sometimes, late at night or during lulls in the day. On how happy it made her. On how much she'd come to rely on it, being there. On how much it felt, despite all the voices in her head screaming "DANGER!" as loud as they could, like love._

#

The rays of the setting sun illuminated Troy's face as he lay, sleeping next to her. Britta watched his chest rise and fall as he slumbered.

She felt terrified.

_I love you._ Troy's words rang through her head. He'd been so earnest when he'd said them, and all she'd felt was the urge to spring up and run out of the room. What was she doing? She had no business being here. She was too hurt, too damaged to ever reciprocate Troy's feelings in the way he wanted. All she was doing by sticking around was making Troy's inevitable heartbreak all the more painful.

_Shut up, _she told herself. She'd been through this dance before. She knew what this was, that her insecurities and self-loathing were throwing out all the same excuses to try and justify cutting and running. It was predictable, really. She knew the inner workings of her own mind on these matters pretty well, by now.

But she'd also known it when she let Vaughn walk away, thinking she'd betrayed and humiliated him. She'd known it when she'd left New York without saying a word to Francis. She'd even had a vague inkling of it when she'd left Adam behind along with her high school, her home, and her family.

This time was different. The realization made her heart stir in her chest. She'd meant it, when she'd told him she wasn't going anywhere. She reached out and cupped Troy's cheek. He leaned into her hand and made a happy noise in his throat, making Britta smile. He was so beautiful…

His eyes blinked open, and he looked at her blearily.

"Oh, sorry," Britta said, feeling her face warm. She pulled her hand away. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"It's cool." He said, sleepily. "What's up?"

_Say it, idiot. Tell him._

He looked at her questioningly. "What?" he asked, starting to grin.

"I-" She wanted to say the words, knew it would make him so happy if he knew. That he wouldn't think that she'd waited too long to say them back, that he'd think it was cute. Adorable. Oh so very Britta of her. But she couldn't. "I just- we haven't really gotten a chance to talk. You know, since you got back."

Troy sat up, resting his back against the headboard. "Yeah, we haven't. Not that, uh, I'm complaining about how we chose to spend our time together or anything," he added, grinning again.

She smiled back and laid her head on his shoulder. "Neither am I."

"Congrats on the final today, by the way," Troy said. "I'm really happy for you."

"Thanks," Britta said, beaming. Duncan's test had been pretty easy, after a semester of actually staying on top of the reading and doing the work.

"How many classes did you take this summer, anyway?" Troy asked as he played with her hair.

"Three, bio with the group and a couple of psych classes Duncan said I had to take it I wanted to get into his lab this semester. God, I hate that prick."

Troy frowned. "Why are you taking his lab then?"

"I'm going to need all the help I can get, if I want to get into grad school. My academic record is kind of, uh, really shitty. And besides," she added, "he's actually not a terrible teacher, when he's not being a total jag."

"Grad school?" Troy sounded surprised. "You've really been giving this a lot of thought."

"I'm almost 32 years old, Troy. I should have been giving this stuff a lot of thought ten years ago." She was surprised by how bitter her own voice sounded.

"Britta…" he took her chin in his hand, turning her face towards his. "Stop being so hard on yourself. You've done so much, you should take a moment to be proud of it. I know I am. Proud of you, I mean."

She looked away, blushing deeply. "I mean, it was either study psych or feel sorry for myself. Or drink. Or smoke pot. Not that I didn't do plenty of all three this summer, but…" She looked at him again. "I don't know. Eventually I just got tired of feeling bad."

"I don't like it when you feel bad," Troy said, wrapping her in his strong arms. She shut her eyes, relaxing against him, letting him pull her back down to the mattress. It was such a simple thing to say, but somehow seemed perfect. He always managed that, managed to make her feel like this. Secure.

"How about you? Besides for holding you captive against your will, was A/C repair school bearable?" she asked after a moment.

"I guess…" he answered. "I mean, I don't find the material totally uninteresting. And it's pretty easy so I can get away with barely studying, which is awesome. But I'm looking forward to taking World History with the group, you know? Doing something more academic again?"

"Annie really, really likes the professor, so hopefully it'll be a good class." Britta said as she idly rubbed his chest. "Even if his name is kinda weird."

"Listen Britta, and I know your schedule is probably packed, but did you want to take another elective with me this semester?" Troy ran a hand down her bare back. "I've always look forward to them. I don't know if I ever said that out loud or not, but it's true. It'd be cool if we had time just to us again, away from the group, y'know?"

"I can make some room," Britta said, smiling. "Worst case scenario I might need to take some summer classes again, but I think it's worth it. I've always loved them too. Did you have anything specific in mind? Dancing again? Acting? Something new?"

"I left Annie's course catalog out on the kitchen table, if you want to take a look together," Troy offered.

"Maybe in a little bit," Britta answered, snuggling in closer to him under the covers. "I'm too comfy right now.

They cuddled silently for a while, Troy's hand continuing to run up and down her back as she rested her head gently on his chest. This was the part she might have missed most, maybe, even more than the sex. Having another body to lie with, to feel warm and animate against her… She looked up at him, expecting to see him looking as happy as she felt.

He was staring up at the ceiling, frowning. He'd continued to stroke her, but worry was streaked across his face. And sadness, too.

_Oh God, _she thought,_ what did I do?_

"What's wrong?" she asked.

He blinked, tilting his head to look at her. "Huh? Oh, nothing. I'm fine."

"Troy…" Britta said, reaching up to cup his face. He closed his eyes, and she felt him relax against her palm. "You can tell me. You can tell me anything."

"I was just thinking about Abed," he said after a short moment. "Just looking around the room, realizing how much I was going to miss the Dreamatorium." He ran a hand down the newly sky blue wall behind them.

"It meant a lot to you," Britta observed.

"Yeah… it did," Troy said, his voice wistful. "I mean, I had tons of fun in here, but it was more than just that. We tackled some deep shit, you know? All kinds of stuff about death and abandonment and sadness…"

Britta looked at Troy, watched the marvel that lit up his face as he reminisced. "I guess I never realized how much it meant to you guys," she said. She was beginning to understand why Abed's despair at the loss of Troy had been so profound.

"I still cry sometimes when I think about the session where we re-enacted the death of temporary Constable Geneva from season 8. And I'd always thought he hated that character…"

"Alright, you lost me a little bit," Britta admitted. "But I am sorry about the Dreamatorium, though."

"It's just this wasn't the welcome home I was expecting, you know? To get a door slammed in my face. Or a blanket in this case I guess, but you know what I mean." Troy sighed.

Britta rubbed his chest again, watching his face as he spoke. His expression was hurt, confused. She recognized that mixture of emotions, she'd felt them after Abed had gone off on her yesterday. Was still feeling them, based on the sense of dread she felt when she thought about their next therapy session.

"I just keep thinking that maybe he was right when he said that moving in together would end us." He continued.

Britta frowned. "He told you that?" It seemed like such a cruel thing to say, but Abed had been unusually… sensitive lately.

"Yeah," he answered, "When I wanted to move in with him after my dad kicked me out. It's why I ended up moving into Pierce's mansion instead of his dorm. I thought he was wrong after our apartment turned out to be such an awesome place, but now…" He sighed.

Britta wanted to tell him about what had happened in the Dreamatorium yesterday. About Evil Abed and multiple timelines and those awful things he'd told her. He wanted him to hug her and tell her the were all untrue, that she wasn't Jim Belushi at all, that she was the cheesiest, most centerest slice of pizza there was. Because she knew, if the words came from him, she could allow herself to believe them, just a little.

But she didn't. Couldn't. Abed _needed_ her, had asked for her help specifically. And she was a psych major, and that meant holding yourself to a standard of ethics that didn't include how good it felt to be reassured of your worth by a boy, no matter how cute he was. And that meant she couldn't tell Troy anything about what Abed had said or done, especially since it so obviously involved him and his absence this summer.

And also, she acknowledged in a deeper, quieter place, because she didn't want to test her assumption that he'd be on her side on this. That he wouldn't tell her that she may have Britta'd his best friend's brain with her dumb attempts to help.

So she didn't say anything, just kept petting him.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I know, I'm probably overreacting. We're just down the hall from each other, after all."

"I don't think you're overreacting," she said, carefully. "I think you're worried about your friend. And I know how awful that feeling is."

"But he's acting like there's nothing wrong, that's what's so frustrating!" he fumed. "Like nothing's changed, like I never left! Like we didn't just spend all day taking this room apart."

Britta felt a fresh stab of guilt, since she knew Abed was agonizing about things just as much as Troy was, that he'd be talking to her about it tomorrow. But she wasn't even sure if Abed wanted people to know he'd agreed to therapy. He was so proud, sometimes.

"I'm sure he's just feeling overwhelmed…"

"He was like this then, too. When we were talking about me moving into his dorm, I mean. Distant, cagey. Always ignoring the little hints I dropped, hints I knew he understood…" He sighed again, then smiled at her. "Thanks for listening to me whine, Britta. It feels good to get this off my chest."

He hugged her closer, but all Britta felt was sorrow. She was the worst.

#

"You don't have a trash can in here?" Britta asked, looking around Troy's room as she held up the wrapper that she'd shoved the towelette-covered condom into. She was fully clothed by then. Troy, still lying under the covers, wasn't. He'd said he wanted to enjoy watching her dress.

"Yeah, I knew I forgot to get something at IKEA today. Just go dump it in the bathroom trash, I guess?" he offered.

Britta made her way into the apartment's common area. Looking behind her, she called out: "You don't think Ms. Clean Freak is going to notice when she goes to clean out the bathroom-"

She froze, mid-sentence, as the front door opened and Ms. Clean Freak herself stepped through. Annie was carrying a brown paper bag with the "Senior Kevin's" label printed on it.

"OH, ANNIE!" Britta said, too loudly, as she shut Troy's bedroom door with her foot. "HELLO! I SEE THAT YOU ARE HOME, NOW!" She hid the condom behind her back, hoping that Annie hadn't noticed it.

"Hey, Britta." Annie said, shooting her an odd look. She dumped her leftovers on the kitchen table. "I'm guessing Troy's home?"

"Yes!" Britta said quickly, trying to come up with a believable lie as to why he was alone in his room. "He's, um, changing!" _That wasn't a lie, idiot!_

"Britta?" Annie asked, staring at her neck as she drew closer. "Is that a… _hickey_?"

"What!" Britta shouted. Without thinking, she brought her hand up to feel her neck. She'd forgotten about the mess she was holding, which, in her panic, she'd squeezed a little too hard, causing a little bit of jism to grease her palm. Troy's cum fulfilled one of its central biological functions, slickening her grip and causing the mess of wrapper, condom, and towelette to slip from her hand. Britta watched in horror as the wad arced through the air and impacted with a wet sounding *THWACK* in the center of Annie Edison's forehead.

Nobody moved for a moment as both women stared at each other. Then, Annie started to tremble ever so slightly. Slowly, she reached a finger up to gather a small amount of the liquid that had started to drip down her face.

"Oh God!" Britta said, covering her mouth with her hands. "Oh God oh God oh God oh God Annie I am so sorry."

The door opened behind her and Troy, now fully clothed as well, walked out. He was grinning broadly for a moment, a grin that slipped as he stared between his two friends questioningly. "Whoa. What happened out here?"

Annie turned her gaze on Troy. Her face was beet red, her eyes wide and wild, burning with anger. Britta had never been more scared of the young woman in her life.

"What the two of you do in your room is your own business, Troy," Annie said, her voice calm in a deliberate, deadly way. "But please tell your girlfriend to please not throw your sperm at me. That would be really, really swell. Because, and maybe this is just an idiosyncrasy on my part, but I don't like to come home after a stressful day TO A FACE FULL OF SPERM!"

"Annie-" Britta said.

"SHUT UP!" she shouted, before collecting herself. She took a deep breath. "I am going to go and take a shower now. Then I am going to retire for the evening. I do not want to talk to you-" she pointed at Britta "-or you-" she pointed at Troy "-for the rest of the day." Then she turned, and walked into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. The shower turned on a short while later.

As soon as she'd left, Britta whirled on Troy. Annie hadn't seemed surprised at all to find that she and Troy had fucked. "Did you tell her?" She could tell by the dumb look on his face that he had. "How could you?"

"I- She tricked me!" He still looked confused by the whole situation. "And you told Shirley!"

"I was drunk!"

"She's diabolical!" His eyes fell on the condom, which had slipped out of the packaging Britta had made to transport it in and was now leaking its contents all over the floor. He looked up at her, confused. "You threw the condom at her?"

"It slipped!" Britta squeaked. She felt her composure breaking as her lips started to twist. Troy's face broke into a grin as he slowly shook his head. She laughed, guffawing, hoping that Annie couldn't hear her in the bathroom. "I'm sorry. I feel so awful!" she said, almost choking.

Troy chuckled too, bringing her in for a hug. "She'll get over it. Jesus, though. She must think we're monsters."

"I really Britta'd it, didn't I?" she asked as she looked up at him.

"At least she didn't find out this way, right? Score one for Troy and his big mouth?" he asked back, as he stroked her hair.

She smiled. "Even our fuckups fit together." He smiled back at her, gazing into her eyes. She felt her lips part and he moved in, kissing her.

Okay, Troy's tongue was making a pretty compelling case here. Maybe she wasn't the worst. His hand reached down to cup her ass through her jeans. Maybe not the worst at all.


	8. Abed's Day

_A/N: Bluuuurgh! Sorry for the long ass break between chapters, readers. I'll try really hard to make sure that doesn't happen again. This chapter was a difficult one to write and edit. Abed's voice is a hard one to nail down, and I'd only written from his POV once before. He's observant, and incisive, but he also has real neurological blocks (face blindness, trouble reading emotions, etc.) that's hard to be true to while also conveying what others are thinking around him. Hopefully you guys like with the balance I tried to work out here._

Abed Nadir woke from his sleep, suddenly. Something was off. Then he remembered: Troy didn't sleep in here anymore. That's why he couldn't hear the slow rhythm of his breath, or the rustle of sheets from the bunk above him. He felt a twinge of regret that he quickly squashed. He'd done the right thing. He only wished Troy hadn't spent one last night in here. Waking up yesterday, with him in the room again, had obviously thrown him.

He smelt something delicious.

"Waffles," he said, to himself. He kicked his covers off himself and swung his legs out of bed.

Troy was standing in the kitchen, his attention fixed on the old waffle iron he'd brought to the apartment with him. He looked over at Abed as he exited the blanket fort, and smiled. "Hey man," he said. "Hungry?"

"Starving." Abed felt his stomach rumble. The smell was even stronger out here. Troy Waffles, as they'd taken to calling his banana and chocolate chip filled creations, were so good that you didn't even need maple syrup. Troy handed him a fully loaded plate.

"There'll be another batch out in a minute. We didn't have any buttermilk so I used yogurt instead. My dad used to do that sometimes when I was a kid," Troy said.

"Annie's not up yet?" Abed asked, glancing at her closed door.

"Nope," Troy said, then looked sheepish. "She's uh, kind of mad at me. That's why I made the waffles."

Abed placed the plate on the dining room table and pulled a chair out, looking back at his friend in the kitchen. "What did you do?"

"It's… a long story," Troy answered slowly.

"Did she walk in on you and Britta having sex?" Abed asked. "I figured something like that might happen. It's a pretty common trope in these types of storylines."

Troy stiffened briefly, his eyes widening. But he relaxed quickly. "I… guess I shouldn't have been surprised that you knew. Is everything… cool with that? Between us, I mean."

Troy was staring at him intensely, his gaze unwavering.

"Everything's fine," Abed said. Troy nodded, but his expression didn't change even as his eyes lost focus. "So she did walk in on you two?"

"Huh?" Troy asked, snapped out of whatever he was thinking by the question. "Oh, no. Britta accidently threw a condom at her."

Abed frowned, and was about to ask for clarification, sure he had misheard, but Annie picked that moment to open her door and join them in the apartment's common area. She stretched, yawning, as she walked over to where Abed was sitting and plopped down in a chair next to him.

"Morning Abed!" she said brightly, touching him on the shoulder and smiling. She shot Troy a much darker look. "Troy."

"Hi Annie!" Troy said, his voice overly cheery. "I made Troy Waffles!"

"He's very sorry," Abed added, helpfully.

"Yeah, he better be," Annie muttered, but a slight smile twisted at the edges of her lips as she speared one of Troy's peace offerings with a fork. "Where'd you go yesterday Abed?" she asked, turning to him. "I didn't hear you come in."

"Out," he replied. "Visiting Dad."

"Oh…" Annie said. Abed didn't want to talk about that with her, didn't usually like talking about Dad in general, so he changed the subject.

"What are your plans for the day, Annie?"

That distracted her. He listened as she described her itinerary, her plans to stop by the library's reserve section to get a headstart on her reading for next semester, on how she was going distribute fliers on campus for Shirley's Sandwiches grand opening on the first day of school, and her desire to go check out the Student Activities Fair next week on the quad to see about maybe joining a club this year. He stared at her as she spoke, soaking in her bubbly enthusiasm. She always got like this, at the start of a new term. Always able to see the possibilities that new opportunity brought. He felt himself smile, and he saw Annie blush.

Troy sat down next to him, placing another plate full of waffles on the table.

"Eat up," he said. "I made a lot. Probably have to freeze some of them."

"How about you, Abed?" Annie asked, the red still not fully faded from her cheeks. "Do you have any plans for today?"

"I'm meeting Britta for a therapy session in about an hour," Abed answered.

He hadn't expected the reaction he got from either of his roommates.

"You've got _therapy _with Britta?" Troy asked.

"You've got therapy with _Britta?"_ Annie sounded even more incensed.

"Yes," Abed said, answering them both. He should have expected Annie's reaction, but Troy's confused him. Had she really not told him?

"Abed! You don't need therapy. You're perfect the way you are, man."

"_Britta!?"_

"Troy: that's not true. I've got a lot of things I need to work on about myself. And Annie: Britta's the entire reason I could even leave the apartment, a couple days ago. Don't be so harsh. I know she can be overenthusiastic sometimes, but she's like Commander Maddox from Star Trek: The Next Generation. He helped Data, even if he did want to cut out his positronic brain at one point," Abed said.

"Abed, I don't understand that reference!" she complained. Troy, who probably did get the reference, didn't let up either.

"Did she- Is this the reason you wanted to take down the Dreamatorium Abed?" he demanded.

"No, in fact I haven't even talked to her about it yet. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to spring this on you, Troy." Abed cocked his head at him. "I'm surprised she didn't tell you, honestly."

"Yeah, me too…" he said under his breath.

"Wait, hold on," Annie said, picking up on the subtext of his answer. "You told Abed about you and Britta but you weren't going to tell me?"

"Uh, I didn't tell him about us Annie, but I'm pretty sure you just did. 'I'm not going to tell anyone Troy!'" he said, his voice taking on a mocking, feminine quality. "That's you."

"Oh, thanks, I couldn't tell you were mocking me until you pointed it out," Annie said, acidly.

"Guys!" Abed shouted, slamming his hand down onto the dining room table. They both looked at him, shocked. "I appreciate your concern for my wellbeing, but I'm an adult. I can make my own decisions."

"Abed…" Troy said. "No one's saying you aren't. I… I was just surprised, that's all." Had he been shouting?

Annie was looking at him too. The flush her argument with Troy had brought on was fading. He studied her face for a moment, taking in the symmetry of her features, the look of concern in her eyes. That face had always been a comfort to him, and he felt a pang in his chest as he recognized the signs of distress marring it at the moment.

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice cracking. "That was an overreaction."

Annie reached over and grabbed his hand. She smiled at him, and he felt reassured.

#

_Annie's breath was hot against his ear, and reeked of alcohol. He was practically carrying her at this point. Her legs were useful for little more than steadying her as they made their way up two flights of stairs._

"_Just leave me," she whined._

"_We're almost there," he told her. He almost regretted, now, not taking Shirley's offer of help getting Annie up to their apartment, but he knew Annie would hate having any more people than necessary see her in her current condition._

"_I don't deserve a comfy bed. Just a hard wooden stair."_

"_Stop it Annie," he said, slightly desperately. He didn't know what else to say. They'd made it to the third floor, by then. He reached into the pocket of his jeans for the key to their apartment. "Jeff was out of line tonight."_

"_Even a kid'll realize eventually not to stick things in the power outlet, if she gets shocked enough," Annie moaned._

_He undid the locks to their apartment, a bit more clumsily then he normally would have, and pushed the door open._

"_You just had a little too much to drink. You'll feel better in the morning. Well," he paused, "probably not immediately. There's a whole series of mediocre comedies about that. But soon."_

_He maneuvered them through the doorway, turning them sideways so they could both fit through. They made their way, together, across the apartment to her room. He pushed her door open, and pulled her across the threshold. Abed pulled the covers off her bed, and laid her gently down onto the mattress._

"_I don't want 'soon', Abed. I've been waiting for 'soon' since I was thirteen years old. Probably earlier. I want now."_

"_I know," he said._

"_I __hate__ living in the moment, Abed. Don't let me ever, ever do it again, 'kay?" she asked, snuggling her head into her pillows as Abed tucked her in._

_He brushed her hair back behind her ear, his hand lingering on her face as he gazed down at her. He smiled, despite the knot of regret he felt in his chest._

"_I'll keep an eye out for it," he said. "Goodnight, Annie." He leaned forward and gently planted a kiss on her forehead._

"'_Night, Abed," she mumbled, her eyes fluttering closed."_

_They didn't talk about their night at the Ballroom, the next day. They both launched themselves into helping Troy settle into his new room, instead. Abed could tell she still needed space and time to reflect on what had happened to her. But the small smile she'd given him the next morning was more than thanks enough, in his mind. Even if his heart still hurt at the thought of her._

#

"So, Abed," Britta asked, after she'd taken a sip of her tea, "How are things?"

She was seated in a recliner opposite him, a notebook open in her lap. She wasn't wearing glasses this time, something that Abed didn't find surprising. He was sitting on Britta's couch, in the middle of her living room. An orange cat sat curled up next to him. He wasn't sure which one it was, but it had both eyes.

He blinked. "Really? You're staring like that?"

Britta frowned. "What- what do you mean?"

"Britta, two days ago I almost tried to saw off Jeff's arm. How do you think 'thing are?'"

"I-I was hoping you were joking when you said that…" Britta looked away.

Abed didn't say anything.

Britta squared her shoulders, and took a deep breath. She turned, facing him again. "Alright then. Let's talk about Evil Abed."

"Okay," Abed said, as he nodded slowly.

"You said 'I' before. Does that mean you don't think Evil Abed was really from a different timeline?" Britta asked, her pen poised over her notebook.

"No. No I know he came from me. From inside my mind, I mean. I can get kind of… lost… sometimes, when I go in the Dreamatorium."

Britta scribbled something. "This isn't the first time this has happened to you?"

"I've… been weird in there before. But never like this," he answered.

"Have you ever thought about cutting off Jeff's arm before, or since?"

"No."

"Do you have a clear memory of the , uh, 'episode'? It's not hard to remember?"

"It doesn't make me feel good to think about, but yes, I remember what happened." Curious, he peeked at her notebook. He'd always had a talent for reading upside down. "There's only one 'a' in dissociative, and fugue starts with an f, not a ph," he told her.

Britta snatched her notebook lap out of her lap, clutching it to her chest. Color flooded her face, and Abed felt a sudden surge of shame. He was doing it again. Looking for ways to belittle her.

"Sorry," Abed said, "Keep asking your questions."

"No, hold on. Why did you do that, Abed" Britta asked.

He frowned. "I said I was sorry."

"I know, Abed, and I believe you, I really do. But whydid you do that? Correct my spelling?"

"I-" his frown deepened. He wasn't really sure why…

"I'm not mad, Abed!" Britta said quickly. "I just want you to tell me what you were thinking, in that moment. What you were feeling."

"I felt… uncomfortable. Like I was… boxed in."

"Because of the way I was asking questions?" He nodded. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that."

He felt her hand on his, and looked up. She was leaning forward over the coffee table, her eyes large and caring, her notebook resting, closed, on her armrest.

"It's… I know you didn't Britta." He gave her a weak smile, which she returned.

"What was it about the way I was asking questions that made you feel that way?" she asked, leaning back.

"I can tell what the question behind your questions were: 'Am I a danger to myself or others?' The same one you had at Halloween. It felt like you were trying to ask it without actually asking it."

Britta nodded, looking thoughtful. "Like I was trying to trick you into answering?"

The image of crystalline mountain of ice collapsing into itself popped into his head, and he nodded.

"Well, I'm sorry Abed," Britta said. "I guess I was being a little bit… avoidant… of the subject. I thought a less direct approach would be better, you know, after… after last time."

His frown returned. "I'm… I'm sorry about that, too."

"Did you feel that same feeling, then? That you were trapped?"

"I… I don't know." He felt the furrow in his brow deepen. "I was trying not to feel, I think, like you said. About how Evil Abed was my way of dealing with fear."

There was an uncomfortable silence between them, for a moment. Britta stared down into her notebook, but her pen was still for once. She seemed to be working herself up to something.

"Okay, Abed. You've obviously been thinking about it, too. Do you think that you're a threat to yourself or others?" Britta asked finally.

"Dr. Heidi thought I was," he said.

"He wasn't a real doctor, and that's not what I asked." Abed was surprised by the firmness that had entered her voice. He'd only usually heard it when she used it on someone else, usually Jeff in the midst of their verbal sparring sessions over the study table. It was rarely directed at him directly, and something about it stirred something in him, now.

_Transference, _he thought. _To be expected._ Britta was staring at him, waiting.

"I'm not sure what the question means," he said, finally. "A threat how? I didn't try to saw off Jeff's arm, in the end, but that's not the only way I can be threatening. You know that, even if you're trying to hide it. You see me differently than you did before. I can tell. You flinched before, at the door, when I came in. You've never been afraid of me before, not like that."

Britta had capped and put down her pen, and was studying Abed. He broke eye contact, looking down at the glass of water she'd offered him that sat, untouched, on the small endtable between them.

"I listened to you tell me your most intimate secrets, Britta. How many people know what you told me? I'm guessing not many. And then, after bullying you into revealing them, I stomped on your insecurities as hard as I could.

"Do I think I could have actually attacked Jeff? No. But I didn't think I could do what I did to you, either. You're right. I've been thinking about whether I'm a danger to others a lot. I was actually glad you picked the Ballroom for Troy's welcome back. It helped put things in perspective. I was cruel there, last time we went, to some random stranger. I didn't take his feeling into consideration, just used him for my own personal amusement. And the more I thought about that, and the last year or so, and about Troy being back, the more I realized how selfish I'd been lately. How myopic. And how I'd been lashing out, taking it out on the people closest to me. And not just you, I've done it to everyone in the study group. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized how much I lacked. How much I'd hurt each of you, in your own ways. On how much I lacked a sense of… empathy."

"Abed," Britta said, gently. He looked up and saw that she was offering him a box of tissues. He took it, plucking a few out and wiping at his nose. He hadn't realized that he'd been crying, or for how long he'd been speaking uninterrupted. His throat hurt, and he took a sip from that glass of water, now grateful for its presence.

"We all feel angry sometimes, Abed. It's a part of what makes us human. Trying to repress that just makes the problem worse, just makes us more likely to take it out on others. Believe me, I have plenty of issues there too, buddy. There are a lot of different anger management strategies we can talk about, if you want. And yes, maybe I do look at you a little bit differently now. And yes, maybe I am still a little bit scared of you. But you're still my friend, Abed. I still care about you. I still know who you are.

"But that person you're describing, the one who you say lacks empathy," Britta continued, "That person doesn't sound like the Abed I know. The Abed I know was so concerned about his friends getting along he inadvertently ended up tracking his female friend's menstrual cycles. The Abed I know spent 26 hours in one room because a friend of his asked him too, and believe me Duncan still talks about that. The Abed I know is sweet, and kind, and ended up getting into a fifteen minute conversation with me the first time I met him, even though all I wanted was to borrow his pencil. Which, um, I don't think I ever gave back."

Abed smiled. She hadn't.

"And, listen," she said. "If it makes you feel better, Abed, a lot of people know I was molested. I… used to wear it a lot more on my sleeve, in my twenties. I made a big deal about how I was a survivor. Probably overcompensating, pretending I was more over it then I was. I even referenced it on my Campus Connect page, I think. Once I started hanging out with you guys… I don't know. It just never came up."

"I don't even remember what I put on mine," Abed said. "I don't think I've looked at anyone else's."

"Are these feelings about anger why you asked Troy to move out?" Britta asked.

"Partly, I guess," Abed said. "We've been way too codependent this past year. We've both admitted it, at various points, but neither of us was doing anything about it. That's why I got in the way when Annie was trying to set you guys up. I'm glad it happened anyway. You two are good together."

"Oh!" Britta said, sounding surprised. "You know about… that."

"Yes," Abed said. He knew he needed to tell her, if he was going to undo any of the damage he'd done that morning. "Troy knows about this therapy session, by the way."

"Oh!" she repeated, her voice even flutier. "Does he?"

"Yeah, sorry. I let it slip at breakfast. I'm not sure he took it well, coming out of the blue like that. I-I didn't realize you weren't going to tell him." Abed looked down again.

Britta took a deep breath. "It's… okay, Abed. I'll talk to him. Don't stress out about it." She grabbed his hand again. "You know everything you tell me in here is confidential, right? I'm not Duncan."

Abed smiled, and squeezed her hand. "I know. I trust you, Britta."

She beamed at him. Then she let his hand go, and reopened her notebook and cleared her throat. "Alright. Now, Abed, and I understand if you don't want to go this deep this quickly, but I want to talk about your mother…"

#

"_Freak."_

_Brian's face is a contorted, jagged thing, his lips curling upwards, his brow furrowing. He's a chubby kid, something Abed hadn't yet developed the tact to understand was something that he didn't need pointed out to him. Over and over again. Until they'd reached this point, out near the lockers with a small crowd gathered around to look._

"_He doesn't even have a mom!" Jack taunts from out of that crowd, loud enough so that all the kids could hear. Abed feels his face burn. He and Jack had been friends, just a couple of years ago back when they'd been in elementary school. Back before they, all of them, had come to the realization of how much power their words had over each other. Before they'd realized the capacity they had to wound one another._

"_Shut up!" he shouts, whirling on the boy, flailing his limbs wildly, trying to smash at Jack with every part of his body that he can manage. The crowd disperses before his rage, leaving Jack exposed. But Jack is bigger, he'd hit a growth spurt that had, as yet, eluded Abed. So his blows, with all the ferocity he can put behind them, don't do anything to punish Jack as he needs to be punished._

"_Whoa, look out!" someone shouts from somewhere behind him. "He might have retard strength!" That gets a titter of laughs._

_Brian grabs him from behind, trapping his arms against his sides and lifting him up. Abed knows what's coming next. Brian and his small gang of friends had spent their recesses for a better part of a month teaching him what came next. He's shoved, roughly, into his own locker as Jack holds the door open. The crowd laughs as he continues shouting, his voice hoarse and aching by now. The locker slams shut with a metallic clang, and he's bathed in darkness except for three narrow shafts of light that peak in through the small slits in the locker door._

_He can hear them out there. He knows they want to hear him bang and clatter, to hear him cry. He won't let them. He sits, passive and stoic, until they all get bored and wander off. Time slips away. His mind wanders. Imagining other worlds. Dreaming…_

#

The common area of the apartment was empty when Abed got back. He'd only been out for maybe an hour and however long it took him to eat lunch at Dad's falafel stand, so he's not shocked that Annie's still out.

"Lucy!" he called, faking a Cuban accent. "I'm home!"

"I'm in my room," came Troy's voice, muffled by the wall between them. Abed frowned. His friend usually didn't pass up a chance to try out his Lucille Ball impersonation.

He strode over and knocked at Troy's door. "Can I come in?"

"Yeah," Troy said with a sigh. Abed opened the door in time to see Troy throw his covers off his body and sit up in his bed. He was still wearing his pajamas. "What's up man? Sorry, I'm not feeling very well."

Abed looked at him evenly. "Britta call?"

"I- I don't know…" Troy said, looking away and rubbing the back of his neck. "I've been napping-"

"Don't be angry at her for not telling you," Abed interrupted him.

"Oh yeah? And why the hell shouldn't I be?" His tone had shifted, and Abed blinked in surprise at Troy's sudden aggression.

"Because she only didn't tell you because I told her I was terrified you thought I was crazy," he lied. "Because of that text you sent me, back when we were fighting over the pillow fort."

The lie had come to him then, in that moment. It wasn't until he'd said it out loud that he consciously considered the emotional effect it would have on Troy. The shame he felt at reopening that old wound sealed a decision in Abed's mind.

_Britta's right,_ he thought. _I've got to be honest with him, or I'll just keep hurting him._

"Abed…" Troy started, "I'm so-"

"I also came in because I wanted to apologize," Abed said quickly, beating him to the punch. "I've been… unfair."

Troy's brow furrowed in confusion. "Huh?"

"I've been keeping you at arm's length since you've gotten back," Abed explained.

"Abed, no-" Troy said, getting out of bed.

"No, it's true. We both know it, let's both say it. I've been distant, and passive-aggressive. I barely welcomed you back. I haven't told you how devastated I was this summer, because you weren't here."

"Don't even worry about it, man," Troy said, putting a hand on his shoulder. His mouth was turned upwards in a smile, now, so Abed must have said something right. "I know this must have been overwhelming for you, my leaving and all. You know… cause of your mom…"

Abed swallowed a lump that had formed in his throat. Troy pulled him in for a long hug.

"I've been angry at you," Abed said, and he didn't realize just how true the words were, how much he'd been thinking them lately, until they were said. "From before the text, even. I don't know why, fully. I think I felt… weak… from how vulnerable you made me feel. From how dependent I felt on how you saw me. That's… usually I don't care about that. About what people think of me."

"I know you don't," Troy said. His voice was choked and heavy, and Abed realized that he must be crying too. "I love you, Abed."

"I love you too." Part of him wanted to be self-indulgent, ironic, and say 'I know' instead. But he knew that would be wrong. Plus it felt… repetitious to say that, for some reason he didn't fully understand.

"I'm sorry, man," Troy said, "That-the things I wrote… I was really angry when I wrote them."

"I know you were. And it's okay." Abed rubbed his friend's back. "And I'm sorry I got rid of the Dreamatorium without asking. I know I violated the lease. I'm just going to have to rely on your sense of goodwill and ask you not to sue."

Troy grinned. "Well, our courtrooms gone so I think you're probably safe. But don't sweat it. I'm glad we talked."

Abed looked around his room. He hadn't been in here yet, since Troy had finished setting it up. "It looks nice in here. You and Annie did a good job."

"Thanks man," Troy said. "What're you gonna do with all the time you used to spend in here?"

"I don't know," Abed said, thinking.

"Whatever happened to the stuff you used to do with Greendale's A/V club? The movies you used to make with them?" Troy asked. "They were pretty dope."

"Oh. Budget cuts. The A/V department got axed last year. Not enough money. But what are you going to do? It's Greendale."

"Yeah…" Troy said, looking past Abed for a moment. "Anyway, Abed, we don't need an empty room to have fun. Let's go do something."

"There's a park about two blocks away that we've never bothered to check out," Abed offered, "Want to go play catch or something?"

"Definitely, man," Troy said, reaching his hand out. Abed slapped it as they both pounded on their chests. "Just… give me a little bit first, okay? I'll come get you when I'm dressed."

Abed nodded, stepping out of the room and shutting the door behind him. He paused, lingering there and listening for a moment.

"Britta?" he heard Troy's muffled voice say, "Yeah, I know you've been calling. I'm sorry…"

Abed stepped away, smiling. He was glad that worked. His backup plan, which involved Britta, a boom box, and a CD of "Come Sail Away" by Styx, had been pretty shoddy, if he was being honest with himself. Things felt much more organic this way.


	9. The First Day of School, Part One

_A/N:_ _I'm glad you guys think I handled Abed well! To the guest who was glad I didn't make Britta a"dumb blonde": thanks! I think sometimes people think Britta is a dumb character, but I don't think she is. Dan Harmon was talking about this on his Reddit AMA, the other day. He had a quote about Britta's intelligence that I liked. I know some people think season 3 went too far and made her stupid, but I don't think it did. Like her description of what an analogy is, I think a lot of what Britta says sounds dumb but is actually pretty incsicive. It's what makes her one of my favorite characters._

_Sorry that this chapters a little shorter, I ended up splitting off a fourth chunk and making it a full chapter after it started to get kind of long. I think it works better this way. Now I've got a little bit of a buffer on this story, so I might go back and fill in some of the gaps from last year, before Troy left for the A/C school._

Dean Pelton slid his car into its personal, reserved parking spot, right next to the Administrative Building. It was the first day of a new school year. Possibility wafted through the fall air. His new therapist really seemed like she was working out.

It was time to seize the day.

His Prius beeped as he locked it behind him. He hummed a happy tune.

"Morning Dean!" Fat Neil said to him as he walked past, arm in arm with Vicki.

"Good morning, Neil!" the Dean said back, beaming. "Vicki! How are you two lovebirds doing?"

"We're doing really great, actually. Neil's going to-"

The Dean didn't listen to the rest of what she had to say, because he was already springing up the stairs to the Administrative Building's front door. He had a couple of hours to kill before his favorite study group started their first meeting. Plenty of time to choose a good outfit. It was Citizenship Day today. Maybe something Statue of Liberty themed…?

"Any messages?" he asked his personal assistant on his way past her desk.

"No," Natalie said in a bored voice without looking up from her magazine.

He opened the door to his office, and skipped giddily over to his closet.

"Dean!" came a voice from behind him, making him yelp.

"There's a student waiting for you in your office," Natalie said over the intercom. The Dean jabbed at the SEND button, feeling heat rush into his face.

"OKAY! NOW YOU'RE JUST BEING UNPROFESSIONAL!" he snapped. He turned to face his visitor.

Troy Barnes was standing near his couch, a serious expression on his face. He must have been waiting there, sitting, for a while, because he looked impatient

"Troy," the Dean said, brightening. He'd known he must have escaped the clutches of the A/C Repair School Annex somehow after TroyTBone09 had become active again, but it was odd to see the young man away from Abed. "This is a surprise. What can I do for you?"

"You've got to refund the A/V Department!" Troy said with utter conviction.

"Refund the… what? Where'd all this interest in school administration come from?" The Dean sat behind his desk, motioning for Troy to take a chair. "Usually it's like pulling teeth to get most of you guys to take an interest in Greendale."

"It's for Abed," Troy said. "He's been feeling down lately, and I want to help him."

The Dean placed a hand over his heart, touched. "You know, I haven't seen Abed at all, not for months. He hasn't been around campus. Everyone's been so worried about him, especially Annie… I think he really missed you, Troy."

Troy nodded, his expression sad. "I know. And seeing as how the only reason I was gone was because we had to rescue you, I was hoping that you'd help me out."

"Troy…" the Dean felt a pang of guilt. "You know I can never thank you guys enough for saving me from being burned to death in the basement of my own school, but it's not that simple."

"Why not?" Troy asked in a frustrated voice. "I thought you ran this place!"

"Greendale's broke, Troy. And I mean for real this time." The Dean felt the enthusiasm ebb out of his body as he thought about the school's finances. "I'm going to have to start cannibalizing the library's computer room just to keep the lights on for the month."

"Oh…" Troy said, his tone softening. "I guess I didn't realize things were that bad…"

"I know," the Dean sighed. "And I've finally got the Board in my pocket too… I had such plans Troy. Such plans. Expanding the internship program. A Woman's Health Center. Working faucets in the second floor bathrooms. But we're broke. Chang and his crazy spending undid all the work I did to get us above water after the A/C Annex cut off our funding."

"Wait, what?" Troy asked. "What did the Annex do?"

"Oh…" the Dean said, wincing. "I may have… offended… Vice Dean Laybourne last year. Accidently. He didn't react well. We used to get most of our money from them. Now we get, um," he swallowed, "nothing."

"That's bullshit!" Troy fumed. "Do you have any idea how much money those dudes waste?"

"I know, right?" the Dean said excitedly, relieved that someone else saw things his way. "But it's too late. The Vice Dean doesn't really strike me as someone who changes his mind a lot…"

"Uh…" Troy said, looking uncomfortable. "I feel kinda weird being the one to tell you this but… the Vice Dean's dead."

"What!? WHY AM I ALWAYS THE LAST ONE TO FIND THESE THINGS OUT!?" the Dean demanded. "When did this happen?"

"Like, two weeks ago. It was pretty messed up, but I avenged him and brought his killer to justice," Troy answered. "I'm kind of a big deal over there now. They think I'm God."

"Well, that sounds pretty good to me!" the Dean said, feeling a bit of his good mood returning. "Do you think you could get them to give Greendale's money back?"

"Let's go find out!" Troy rose from his seat, grinning confidently.

"Oh Troy!" the Dean said, circling around to the front of his desk. He reached out and felt one of Troy's pecs. It was strong, and firm under his fingers. "You're a lifesaver!"

There was an awkward silence for a moment. "Please take your hand off my chest," Troy finally said, his voice even but firm.

The Dean pouted, but complied. He wasn't as much fun as Jeffery.

#

"I'm sorry, Truest Repairman, but what you ask is impossible," High Priest Thornsten said, sadly. He hated to be a disappointment.

"What?" his Lord asked him. "Why?"

"Yeah!" shouted the smaller, balder man next to him. "Explain yourself to the Truest Repairman!"

"Okay, dial it back a little Dean," He said, gently.

"Sorry, this is just so exciting!" the strange man said, looking around the Meeting Hall. "I feel like I'm in Dune!"

"Apologies, Your Coolness, but the texts are quite clear here. Only the Vice-Dean may negotiate a new contract, and we are without a Vice-Dean. And that is no small dilemma in and of itself," Thorsten said, bowing his head as a sign of submission to Him. "I tried to speak to you of this when You came last week to retrieve Your cellular phone, but You would not stop to listen."

"Whatever," He said, impatiently. "Can't I just do it?"

"I'm sorry, High Priest. I've held my tongue for long enough, but this is ridiculous," Dennis said from his right.

"Dennis!" Thorsten said, raising a hand in warning.

"No! I will speak!" Dennis said, louder. "This- this boy!? Vice Dean? Which mysteries has he been inducted into? In which sacred books has his name and deeds been recorded? I know who he says he is, but would the Truest Repairman really ask us to give up so much from the fruits of our sweat and blood to- to a bunch of non-fixers!?" Dennis looked from face to face among the Council, as if expecting to find agreement, but none met his gaze. None except Thorsten, who stared Dennis in the eyes until the more junior Repairman swallowed, and retook his seat.

"You must forgive Brother Dennis," Thorsten said. "Sobriety has been difficult for him."

"Listen, uh-" The Truest Repairman looked at Thorsten expectantly.

"Wha-? Oh. High Priest Thorsten, Your Coolness," Thorsten answered, realizing that He did not know him, at least not in this form of Himself. It was an important lesson in humility, and one he would reflect on.

"Listen, High Priest Thorsten," He said. "What do I need to do to get the Dean his money?"

"Well… a new Vice Dean must be selected, but here the texts fail us. The Vice-Dean appoints his own successor, but Laybourne was murdered by his choice. There is no precedent for this," Thorsten said, solemnly. "Perhaps Dennis's outburst, impudent though it was, should guide our path, Your Coolness. Perhaps… you should become Vice-Dean." There was a murmur from the Council.

"Can't I just choose someone?" He asked. Thorsten would hate to call His tone of voice "whiny", but… "I don't want to be Vice-Dean. Dennis." He shot the man a pointed look. "It sounds like a drag. And a lot of work."

"Yes… actually yes I think you can!" Thorsten replied, becoming excited. "We're on shaky ground, theologically, but the first Vice-Dean was appointed by the Truest Repairman in Astral Form, in a dream shared by the Founding Council. So there is precedent, here! Why, yes, the more I think about it the more elegant a solution it appears to be!"

"Jesus, Abed would really get a kick out of you nerds," the Truest Repairman said, grinning. He turned to the one He had called Dean. "Come on. I've got an idea."

#

"You want me to what?" Jerry Major asked, placing his mop back into the bucket on his cart. The question had startled him, as had the kid's appearance here, outside the Repair School. They usually kept the new recruits under closer supervision.

"I want you to come be Vice-Dean," Troy repeated. Dean Pelton, who was also here for some reason, nodded next to him.

"Kid, that's got to be the weirdest goddamn thing I've ever heard you say," Jerry said. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Look, I know I was pretty mean to you the last time we talked and I'm sorry," Troy said, his voice earnest. "But you were right. Air-conditioning repair isn't any better than plumbing or carpentry or whatever else. I need someone who can help me show them that. You know how weird they are over there. And I know you like teaching, Jerry! I could see that… in how you were with me."

Jerry was surprised at the lump that had formed in his throat. He swallowed it. The kid was grinning broadly at him, exuding that air of confidence like he always managed to do. "I… that's nice to hear Troy," he said, slowly. "But I don't know anything about administrating a school. And what about Laybourne? And what are you even doing outside of the Annex, kid? Aren't they looking for you?"

"Okay, well, that's kind of a long story," Troy said, taking a deep breath. "At the end of last year I was forced to join the A/C repair school to save my friends from the power mad head of security who also happened to be my former first year Spanish Instructor. Now-"

"Okay-" the Dean said, interrupting and stepping forward in front of Troy. "Troy and I have very important study group meeting to get to soon so I'm going to hurry this up. Hi, I'm Dean Pelton." He offered his hand and Jerry shook it, reflexively. "You might remember me from when I hired you? And then when I rehired you at half the pay, after Chang fired the entire janitorial staff? Would you like to come make what in my opinion is a ludicrous amount of money in exchange for essentially putting a rubber stamp on a bunch of administrative decisions I tell you to make?"

"Dean!" the kid objected.

"Oh, alright!" Pelton said, rolling his eyes. "And you can help Troy deprogram a bunch of cultists _if you really want_."

"How much is a ludicrous amount?" Jerry asked, stunned.

"Well, the thing is, the Vice-Dean's salary is probably going to be the first thing we cut. But a lot more than you make right now, I can guarantee that. And Greendale will actually be able to hire a full janitorial staff again."

The reality of the situation was only just beginning to dawn on him. A life free of cleaning up after human piss and shit? He looked over at the kid, a grin breaking out over his face.

"Kid?" he asked. "I think I might love you."

Troy grinned back.


	10. The First Day of School, Part Two

_A/N: In case anyone missed it: I went back and added two new chapters to Applied Studies in Cannabis that tell what happen after Troy and Britta wake up from their little nap. It's in continuity with this story, if you haven't read it yet, and tells the story of how they first hooked up._

It was Day One of the Year of Perry. She'd emerged from the crucible of this long, hot, lonely summer a stronger, more confident woman. She'd self-actualized the fuck out of herself. She was a lean, mean, studying machine. She was getting laid on the regular, and things were going pretty good on that front. Britta smiled as she pushed the library doors open, thoughts of her paramour floating through her head.

She'd even managed to make it to the study group's first meeting early. And it was a _Monday!_ She was unstoppable.

"BRITTA!"

Britta started, letting out a small "eek" as she whirled around to see a determined looking Annie Edison bearing down on her.

"Oh, Annie," Britta said. "You scared me a little bit. Ow!" The younger woman grabbed her roughly by her arm and dragged her off into the stacks. "Get off!"

Britta managed to yank her arm out of Annie's grip, rubbing at it and shooting her friend a hurt look. "What the fuck, Annie?"

Annie jutted an index finger right into her face. "Listen!" she said curtly, her tone quick and clipped. "You are going to leave Abed alone. No more half-witted head shrinking I don't know what happened on the day of the Bio test but we both know whatever it was it probably didn't meet the APA's guidelines for ethical treatment."

Britta felt her face go cold, her jaw clench. Annie had consoled her that day, before Troy had shown up and everything turned around. And it probably should have occurred to her that Annie was smart enough, _diabolical_ enough, to put two and two together and figure out why once she'd heard about Abed's therapy sessions.

"Oh, and I suppose they teach you all about medical ethics in your classes, huh?" Britta sputtered.

"Yes!" Annie said, incredulous. "They do!"

_Oh, right, shit. They would, wouldn't they?_ Britta thought to herself. She couldn't show weakness in front of Annie though, not now. "Whatever! I know what I'm doing! I'm a psych major!"

"You never know what you're doing!" Annie retorted. Britta started to feel herself go red in the face, anger rising up in her again.

"Abed seems to think I do!" Britta said. "And you know that, don't you? You had plenty of time to confront me about this over the past week; I've been at your apartment enough. But you wanted to do it when Abed wasn't around. You already tried to talk to him about this and he told you to butt out, didn't he?"

Annie faltered, taking a step back. "No, I-"

"_You_ listen, Annie," Britta said, seizing the initiative. "I have had to deal with enough tip-toeing around this shit with Troy, and I've got way fewer reasons to be as diplomatic with you. Abed asked for my help. Maybe he should go to a fully trained psych major, but he doesn't want to. Maybe that's a mistake, but it's his to make. So back the fuck off!" She ended her speech with an authoritative little poke at Annie's chest. The brunette shrank back, and Britta felt her anger start to fade away, guilt seeping in to replace it. She might have been… venting a little bit there. "Besides… worst case scenario you get to laugh at me for being stupid again when everything blows up in my face. "

"Britta!" Annie said, her expression shifting from scared to hurt. "I'd never laugh at you!" Britta shot her a look. "Okay, that's a lie. I don't think you're stupid though."

Britta snorted. "Yeah right. You say it often enough."

"No, honestly! I know I can rag on you kind of hard sometimes, but I don't think you're stupid, not really. I guess I just… I don't know. You're so intimidating sometimes Britta! And… and sometimes I feel like being 'the smart one' is the only way I can compete with that." She smiled, a little sadly, and looked away. "Too many gold stars as a kid, I guess."

"Annie…" Britta said, the anger all gone now. She reached out and rubbed her arm reassuringly. "It's okay. I'm sorry too. I know you're just worried about Abed."

"He… he goes into the blanket fort and just sits in that box. The one he made after the Dreamatorium turned into Troy's room. Just sits there, sometimes for almost an hour. Sometimes longer." Annie looked away.

Britta sighed. She and Abed had talked about that, his little coping mechanism. She wasn't going to tell Annie about any of that, though; both because it would violate Abed's trust and because it would just make Annie feel sadder. "I shouldn't have yelled at you. I've just been really stressed. Troy and I decided we're going to tell the group today. About us."

"Yeah…" Annie said hesitantly. "I don't think there's a single person who doesn't already know."

"Oh, I know there isn't," Britta answered darkly. "I went and told Jeff last night."

"Oh!" Annie said, her voice raising an octave. "Did he- how did that go?"

Britta narrowed her eyes at the younger woman. Was she still going to be jealous like this whenever she brought up Jeff? _When is she going to get over him?_ "Not well. He acted really… weird…" She shook her head. "Whatever. Let's just forget about this and head to the study room, 'kay?"

Annie hugged her, surprising Britta a little, but she returned it.

_Year of Perry_, she thought.

#

The rest of the group was already in Group Study Room F when Annie and Britta walked in. All except one. Britta frowned as she looked from Annie to Abed.

"Where's Troy?" she asked as she took her seat.

"I don't know," Annie answered. "He was out the door before either of us this morning." Abed nodded in agreement. "I thought he'd be here already, honestly."

"I hope he turns up before the Grand Opening," Pierce muttered. "I told him how important it was that we get as many people there as possible."

"Actually, Pierce, _I_ did," Shirley corrected him, an edge to her voice. "And he'll be there. He promised."

"Guys, I think we'll survive if Troy's ten minutes late," Jeff interrupted, his arms folded over his chest. "Can we please, for once, stick to the idea of being a _study_ group talk about our History class?" He was hunching over in his seat even more than he usually did, and Britta could see the vein work in his neck as he clenched and unclenched his jaw.

She shot Annie a look as if to say: "See? This is the shit I have to deal with." The other woman nodded, a worried look on her face.

"Okay… Jeff…" Annie said slowly, the affectedness of her tone a little too obvious. "There hasn't been a meeting of our History class to talk about yet, but we could get a head start on the reading, if people wa-"

"Yes, good." Jeff said quickly, ignoring the fact that you could probably count on your hands the number of times they'd actually read from a textbook during one of these meetings. "Let's do that."

Britta could feel the tension in the room swelling. Annie wasn't the only one who looked uneasy. Shirley shot her an anxious look from across the table. Even Pierce seemed to realize something was in the air, and looked from Jeff to her with a quizzical look on his face. She felt the need to say something, anything, building in her, and in situations like that she tended to go with what was familiar. So she quirked an eyebrow and asked: "Since when do you believe in reading ahead, Winger?"

She was hoping he'd rise to her bait and engage in a little playful banter, diffuse the tension, and allow them all to get on with their lives. Instead he made eye contact with her briefly (the first time since she'd entered the room) and then looked away, muttering, "I- uh- I'm trying to turn over a new leaf."

She rolled her eyes as hard as she could. _Back to square one, I guess. _Why did he always have to want what he couldn't have? Why was he waiting almost a year and a half after they'd stopped having sex to start acting vulnerable again? And why did he have to be so god damned _good_ at it? She tried, desperately, to think of some other way to salvage the situation, to get things to a point where she and Troy could reveal their relationship with a minimum of drama. But Abed beat her to the punch.

"Jeff's jealous of Troy," he said.

"Abed!" Annie said sharply.

"No. I'm tired of all the social landmines and emotional booby traps you people keep leaving everywhere," Abed said, his voice firm. There was an edge of anger to it; something the psych major part of Britta's mind took note of for this week's session. The rest of her just sunk deeper into her seat and hoped, desperately, that he'd show a bit of restraint. "I'm tired of all the tension. It never let's up, it's just gotten worse and worse. And I can't deal with it anymore; sitting in silence and watching it build up. So I'm going to start saying what I'm thinking. And what I'm thinking is: Jeff's jealous of Troy."

"Of course he is!" Pierce interjected. "They're both fighting each other over who gets to be the beta male!"

"Abed," Jeff said, ignoring Pierce, "I'm sorry that you're feeling stressed. But I am not jealous of Troy."

The double doors of the study room flew open, and in strode Dean Pelton followed closely by Troy. Britta felt a jet of warmth in her chest as some of the tension eased off her back. She smiled at him, and he gave her a tiny little wave.

"Okay, sorry gang didn't have time to get a costume together so I don't have a Dean pun for you today," the Dean said. Shirley and Annie both "awed" sadly. "But I've got big news! Troy and I-"

"Wait, Dean," Troy interrupted, his eyes gleaming, "Can I tell them? I've been thinking about what to say ever since we left the Annex."

The Dean's face broke into a big grin. "Oh, alright Troy! Go ahead! It is all thanks to you, after all."

"What?" Britta asked, her smile widening. They both seemed really excited. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jeff pull out his cell phone. She ignored him.

"Okay, well," Troy said, looking around the table. "Shirley! I told everyone in the A/C repair school to come to your opening today. They have to do what I say, because they think I'm the living avatar of mankind's ability to fix stuff on the material plane. The cafeteria's gonna be packed."

"Oh yay!" Shirley said, clapping. "Thank you, Troy!"

"While the Dean and I were down there, we forced them to fork over a bunch of cash to Greendale. That means the school's not going to be so run down this year, and we don't have to worry about homeless people taking over the study room again because there will be non-crazy security guards on the staff. Oh, and Annie! The Dean says they'll finally be able to pay a specialist to get rid of that black mold you're always complaining about."

"That's great!" Annie said. "There's more mold than wall in that stairwell at this point."

"And Abed!" Troy continued, his voice becoming quicker and more excited. "The Dean says they can afford to restart the A/V department again!"

"Really?" Abed asked, smiling openly.

"Yeah, buddy!" Troy gushed, walking over to his friend. "And there's a giant room that A/C school is wasting that I thought maybe you guys could turn into a studio."

"Troy…" Abed said, his voice breaking. He swallowed. "Thank you."

"And Pierce!" Troy said, even though he was walking backwards, away from the old man as he talked, towards her. "The Dean says he's got an idea to start a Woman's Health Resource Center on campus."

Pierce frowned. "Why the hell would I give a shit about that?"

"Because! It's going to offer cheap birth control to registered Greendale students!" he laid a hand on Britta's shoulder. "Which means Britta and I can finally start taking your advice! No more condoms! BOOYAH!" Britta felt her chest clench.

"You…" Pierce seemed genuinely moved. "You remembered…"

Troy was looking down at her expectantly, a broad grin on his face. It faltered as she shot a look over at Jeff, who was jabbing at his phone with way more strength than the buttons required. Troy looked confused, maybe even hurt at her hesitation, his eyes more and more questioning as Britta continued to say nothing. She felt everyone's gaze on her again.

"Can we… talk outside?" _Year of fucking Perry…_ she thought, sardonically

#

"You were the one who said you wanted to tell the group!" Troy fumed. "You said you didn't want our relationship to be a dirty little secret! You said it would stall out and crash otherwise!"

"I know!" Britta hissed. "Keep your voice down!" This was the second heated conversation she'd had in the middle of a bunch of library stacks today, which seemed, to her, like two too many.

"I thought you'd be happy!" Troy said, more quietly. "Not pissed off at me."

"I'm… I'm not pissed," she said. She wasn't entirely sure what she was, but she felt a lot better being outside that room. "I'm not entirely sure what you just did, with the Dean today, but it sounds like you did a pretty awesome thing for a lot of people. And I'm proud of that. But you showed, like, zero tact in there dude."

"Oh," Troy said, his voice becoming cold. "This is about Jeff."

"No, fuck you!" Britta snapped, hissing. "You don't get to do that. You made this about Jeff the second you didn't include him in that little 'Great and Powerful Oz' routine you had going in there! Not to mention when you practically started humping my leg in front of everybody! I'm not just self-conscious about Jeff seeing that, Troy. Do you think I want to rub Shirley's face in the fact that I'm leading you down the sinful path of pre-marital sex?"

"I-" Troy reached up to rub the back of his head. "I guess I… got kind of carried away…" He gave her those big puppy dog eyes, the ones that never failed to make her heart swell with affection. And heaven help her when he used them on her in bed… _Nope! Bad vagina. Focus,_ she thought to herself, knowing there was plenty of time for arousal later. "I just got so excited, you know? Getting my chance to be the big hero. Doing my little speech…"

She reached out and cupped his cheek. "It was a pretty good speech…" she said, her voice softening. "And I am… excited… about not having to use condoms anymore."

Troy grinned. "Me too." But then he looked downcast again. "I hope I didn't run the Year of Perry on its first day."

"Don't worry about it," she said, encircling his waist with her arms and pulling her head to his chest. "It wouldn't be named after me if it didn't have to get used to a little bumpiness." She wasn't sure what she was going to do about Jeff, how she was going to defuse that particular time bomb in her life. And she wasn't really sure how she'd ever be able to afford grad school, or the year or so of interning after that it'd take her to get licensed. But she felt sure of this, of him, and for now that was enough. It was a start.

_A/N: Okay, does it really make sense that there isn't a Planned Parenthood in Greendale or its environs that Britta could drive to to find subsidized birth control pills? Probably not. They do have really weird brands there, and it is kind of a magical, removed place. But it's still probably a stretch, I acknowledge._


	11. The First Day of School, Part Three

_She was standing there in the middle of his hall, clutching at one arm as she looked nervously over her shoulder. She looked uncomfortable. She always had in the past, in these moments right before he opened his door. But he doubted she was here for the same reasons now, unless her relationship with the wonder boy had gone south already._

_But he doubted it. He'd seen the way she'd looked at him, out behind that bar. He sighed, and pulled the door open._

"_Britta," Jeff Winger said, keeping his voice calm._

"_Hi…" she replied, weakly. Her eyes went to the tumbler of scotch in his hands_

"_Want some?" he asked, taking a sip. He hoped she'd say yes. It'd give him an excuse to refill his glass, to pour a bit more alcohol down his throat to try and quench the fire in his chest._

"_No. I'm not going to stay long." She winced. "Fuck. This already feels awkward. Can I come in?" _

_He stepped out of her way, letting her cross the threshold into his apartment. It was the first time she'd been in here, since they'd stopped fucking. Except for the brief period when Chang had been his roommate, she'd almost always come to him. _

_Britta plopped down on his couch as he stood, watching her. She took a deep breath._

"_Alright. I didn't want another repeat of the whole 'Vaughn' fiasco, so… I thought you should hear it from me. In private." She was watching his face intently. "Troy and I… we've been… seeing each other."_

_Jeff had thought a lot about how he'd react when he "found out" about this. He'd thought about laughing at her, about hiding his own pain by making her feel bad about herself. He'd thought about getting angry. He'd thought of about ten different jokes he could make, most of them centering on the difference in their ages. He thought about breaking down, of telling her how empty his life seemed to him now and how much he regretted the choices he'd made, especially the ones about her._

_But all those different ideas got caught up in each other as they tried to push and shove their way outside his head. So he just nodded, and said: "Okay."_

"_We're telling the group, tomorrow," she continued._

"_Okay," he repeated. He still hadn't moved from where he'd been standing when she walked in._

"_And I just wanted to make sure, you know, that things were cool. Between us."_

_He took another sip of his booze._

"_God, if you're just going to stand there-" Britta fumed, standing up and stomping towards the door, "-__mocking__ me, I'm going to go. I knew this was a stupid idea. I don't know why I thought you'd give a shit."_

"_Britta-" he grabbed her arm as she passed him, stopping her. He felt her stiffen at his touch. "I do."_

_She was studying his face again, and she looked sadder now. He felt her start to relax, and he rubbed her arm gently with his thumb. He saw a small shadow of the intimacy that they used to share cross her face._

"_Jeff…" she said. "Don't."_

"_Okay," he said again. He let her go. "Sorry."_

"_I'll see you in the study room tomorrow," she said, her voice slightly choked. And then she left. Jeff closed the door behind her, then rested his forehead on it's cool, wooden surface. He didn't move for a long time, afterwards._

#

"Wait… Troy and Britta are sleeping together?" Dean Pelton asked, incredulous, as the study room doors closed behind the retreating couple. He looked from face to face around the table. "IS THERE A LISTSERVE OR SOMETHING I'M NOT SIGNED UP FOR?!"

Jeff ignored him. He struggled to get his breathing under control, to get his heart to stop pounding so quickly in his chest. He pushed his chair back, standing and sliding his cell phone into his back pocket. "Since it seems like we're not going to get any work done today," he said, as if not doing work wasn't his raison d'être, "I'm going to go."

"Jeff!" Annie objected.

"I'm with Jeffery," Shirley said. "Do you really think they're coming back? Those two are probably half-way to a supply closet by now."

"Shirley!" Annie objected again, more shrilly, "Gross!"

"What's the matter Annie?" Jeff asked, her obvious embarrassment suddenly deeply offensive to him for some reason. "Are they not so cute anymore?"

_He instantly felt bad, even before she shot him a look of betrayal. He knew he had no right to mock anyone for being emotionally confused, not right now._

_"Sorry," he mumbled._

_"Abed's right about you," she seethed. "You need to find a healthier way to vent your jealousy Jeff because it's making you act like a real jerk!" She stood, grabbing her backpack from the back of her chair._

_"You guys…" the Dean said, looking around at all of them, pain etched into his face. Everyone else was following Annie's lead and packing up their things. "You're not supposed to fight… We- we have money this year! I fixed everything!"_

"I'll see you at lunch," Jeff said, and turned and walked out the study room. He made his way out of the library and out into the quad, moving at a brisk pace, putting as much distance between him and the group as he could. He'd embarrassed himself in there, he knew that. He felt guilty about upsetting the group, even the Dean.

He stalked across the quad, his shoulders hunched over. His head throbbed, and he felt slightly dizzy. He made his way over to the nearest empty bench, no longer confident that his legs could keep him upright.

He hadn't intended to get that worked up.

He stopped, placing his hand on the bench and sinking into it. "Christ…" he muttered. He wiped a hand across his clammy, sweating forehead and down his face.

He really hadn't. He knew he owed it to Britta to play it cool in there, and he'd failed. Completely. The only small victory he could take away was that he wasn't the one who'd embarrassed her the most. Jeff smirked, thinking of Troy. _Dumbass,_ he thought. He could understand why Britta was attracted to his earnestness, but he also knew it would ultimately be what drove her away from him. Britta didn't need some fresh-faced kid who was just as excited about the new season of Inspector Who (or whatever) as he was about her. She needed someone reliable, someone that knew who she was and would be there for her after passions had cooled and reality had set in.

Someone like him.

"Stop it," he said, aloud.

"Stop what?" Abed asked.

"Jesus!" Jeff said, whipping his head around to see his friend standing there, in the middle of the path leading back to the library. Abed regarded him evenly, not speaking. Jeff felt annoyance bubble up inside him. "What? You hear to point the obvious out to me some more, Abed? Yes. I know. I'm a jackass."

Abed quirked his head.

"And no, I don't know why. I don't know what the hell is the matter with me. I've always been able to keep myself together before, through way more stressful situations than this. I _defrauded the state bar_ without breaking a sweat. I've never had trouble controlling my emotions like this. I don't know what's happe-"

"You were able to control how you reacted to your emotions," Abed interrupted. "That's not the same thing."

Jeff blinked, derailed. That was a pretty good point.

"You should start coming to Yoga with me," Abed offered.

"What?" Jeff asked.

"Yoga," Abed repeated. "I started going at the end of last year. I stopped over the summer, obviously, but I'm going to sign up for another class. You should come with me; I think it'd help you. Plus we haven't spent a lot of time with each other recently. And I don't like that."

"I-" Jeff was taken aback. He'd assumed Abed had come out here to yell at him. Somehow, though, this made him feel even worse. And maybe that was a good thing. "Yeah, Abed. Sure. That sounds like a good idea."

"Cool. You're my friend Jeff." Abed cocked his head again. "But Troy and Britta are also my friends."

"I know, Abed. They're my friends too." He looked away.

"I can empathize with feeling conflicted about their relationship. I was too; you know how much I don't like change. I let that scare me. Let that make me do things I regret now. But don't mess things up between them. They both deserve this." His voice suddenly hardened. "And stop being a dick to Annie. That's strike two."

Abed turned and walked away before Jeff could respond to that, leaving him sitting there alone with his mouth hanging half open. The reproach about Annie probably stung the most, but he was right about everything. Jeff sighed, standing. Abed usually was. He had some people to apologize to.

#

He found them coming out the library's back entrance, holding hands. Judging by their appearance, the state of their clothing and Britta's hair and makeup, he guessed that Shirley had been wrong about that supply closet. Britta saw him approaching, and gripped Troy's hand tighter.

"Easy," he said in response to the way both their faces had tightened. "I'm here to apologize. I know navigating your relationship around the five of us must be hard enough without me out there, splashing around like a god damned baby. So… I'm sorry. For that."

"Thanks Jeff! That's really big of you," Troy said, before Britta elbowed him in the ribs. "Oh! And I'm sorry too. I should have been more considerate of your feelings in the way I chose to reveal the fact that Britta and I had become lovers."

Britta shot him a sour look.

"What?" Troy asked, grinning at her. "I know you don't like 'girlfriend.'"

"'Lovers' is way grosser, dude," Britta objected, but she was smiling too.

Jeff was already starting to feel a rising tide of nausea sweep over him, so he interrupted. "Let's just try this whole announcement thing again. Call a mulligan?"

Troy looked over at Britta, still smiling. "Okay."

"Jeff," Britta said. "Troy and I have started seeing each other."

"That's great," Jeff said, keeping his voice genuine. "I mean, I think Britta's name is probably going to end up in a sex offender database…" Britta groaned, but the noise was much more amused than annoyed. "But really. I know I was acting like a jerk before but I'm happy for you two. I hope it works out."

Britta smiled at him. "Thanks. I appreciate that, Jeff, I really do."

Jeff watched them walk off across the quad, hand in hand. But his smile didn't reach his eyes. He knew, deep down in his heart, that he'd been lying.


	12. Eros and Thanatos

_A/N: Sorry about the delay! The premiere getting delayed till probably January made me stop and think about where exactly I wanted to end the story._

_Special thanks to MC Aitlyn for taking a look at this chapter for me. You're always good about getting me to trust my writing, so thanks! I probably wouldn't still be doing this if it wasn't for the encouragement I got (and keep getting) from you._

"So how's she look?" Pierce asked, peering down over his shoulder. Grunting, Troy finished tightening the bolt he'd been working on. He wiped the back of his forehead with the back of hand and stood up.

"I don't think whoever you got to put this water heater in knew what they were doing. I'm pretty surprised it took this long to break down." Pierce muttered something under his voice about Mexicans, but Troy ignored him. "It's fixed now, though."

"That took you like five minutes!" Pierce said. Troy shrugged. "How'd you figure out what was wrong with it so fast?"

"I…" Troy scratched the back of his head. He'd never tried to put it into words before, what happened when he fixed things. "I just… figure out what each piece is supposed to do. From what's around it, you know what I mean? And how they're supposed to work together to form something bigger. And then I just figure out which part isn't doing what it's supposed to and… fix it. Does that make any sense?"

"No," the older man said bluntly. "But I'm glad I've got hot water again. Want something to drink?"

"Sure!" Troy answered, following Pierce up the stairs out of the mansion's basement. "I'd love a glass of water, I'm pretty thirsty."

"That's not the kind of drink I meant! I got my hands on some more of that Serbian rum." Troy remembered that stuff. It tasted _awful_. It must have shown on his face, because Pierce frowned. "Come on, don't be a pussy! Your ball and chain isn't here."

"Yeah," Troy said, bristling as Pierce clapped him on the shoulder. "'Cuz if there's one thing Britta hates more than anything else, it's drinking."

"Oh, don't be like that!" Pierce objected as they made their way into his lavish kitchen. He produced a bottle of dark brown liquid and a couple of glasses from a cupboard. "Just one drink. We've barely spent any time together since the year started. Please, Troy. Don't make me drink alone."

"Fine," Troy said, softening. He might have been neglecting the old man a little lately. "One drink."

"There we go!" Pierce said, pouring a couple of fingers into one of the glasses and sliding it to him across the table. "Now. Did I ever tell you about the time I met Eartha Kitt?"

#

"And then *BRAAAAP* -'scuse me- then John Astin turns to me said: I thought you said _forty."_

Troy choked, booze stinging his nasal passage as he tried to keep from spitting up all over himself in laughter. "Oh man!" he cried, after safely swallowing. He didn't know who most of the people in Pierce's stories were, but that had stopped mattering to him so much after the second or third drink. "That is crazy, man. You're _crazy_."

Pierce blinked suddenly, looking out the window. "Ah, Jesus! It's dark out. When the fuck did that happen?"

"Uh, probably when the sun went down?" Troy said, grinning goofily. "Dumbass!" He laughed. Damn he was funny.

Pierce laughed too. "You never could hold your god damn liquor you fucking lush."

"Fuck you!" Troy shouted. He stood, shakily. How dare he! He was the best drinker. "I am the best drinker!"

"Do you want me to pay for a cab?" Pierce asked, squinting up at him.

"Nah! I'll call Britta. She'll give me a ride. I mean pick me up. I mean- shut up!" Troy shouted, grabbing his half-full glass. He stumbled out into the hall, fishing his phone out of his pocket. He steadied himself against a nearby end table as he struggled, briefly with his cell phone. After a couple of tries, he managed to get the dumb fucking thing to call his girlfriend's number.

"Hi Troy!" Britta said brightly, after a couple of rings. He loved the sound of her voice, bubbly and cheerful. He licked his lips. "What's up?"

"Heeeeeey baby," he said, grinning.

"Hi," she repeated, and he could hear her smiling too. "Sounds like someone's been having fun. I take it the water heaters fixed?"

"Pierce made me drink too much," he said, resting his forehead against the wall next to him.

Britta tsked. "Well, he is just a bad influence, isn't he?"

"I tried to explain how much danger he was putting me in," Troy continued.

"Oh no!" Britta gasped. "From what?"

"From naughty, sexy older women," Troy explained. "Who might take advantage of a poor, naive young boy who doesn't know about their wicked ways."

"How awful!"

"I need someone to come protect me," Troy said, trying to sound as pitiful as possible.

"I don't know, I suspect these aging spinsters you're worried about might be in for a disappointment," Britta countered. "It's hard to steal an innocent baby lamb's purity if he's too drunk to get it up."

"Baby, I don't need a hard dick to get you off," Troy said. "I will go to town on your vagina. My tongue will buy a house there. He'll get a mortgage." Britta laughed, and the sound was like nectar to him. "Buy a dog. White picket fence. But then his hair starts falling out. He takes out a second mortgage. Sales start slipping at the plant. They cut back his hours. His wife leaves him because she finds out about the gambling."

"Jesus, you're wasted! Did you try to keep up with Pierce? He's got like 30 pounds on you!" Britta said, still giggling.

"I'll have you know I'm the best drinker. In the whole entire world. Ask _anybody_."

"Has anyone ever told you that you're a really happy drunk?"

"I'm always happy when I'm talking to you," he said in a lower voice.

Britta cleared her throat, in the way she did when she was flustered, and he felt a stirring in his loins in spite of all the alcohol pumping through his body. He could picture her, then, see the way her cheeks reddened at something so minor. God she turned him on so much. "Okay, so you're still at the mansion? You can use Pierce to keep those women of poor moral character away from you until then." She paused. "I'll see you soon."

I'll see you soon. Not I love you. He swallowed. It's not what he wanted.

_Stop it, _he thought. _Stop looking for reasons for things to be shitty._ He knew how Britta felt. Words were less important.

"G'bye," he said. He hung up.

He stumbled back into the kitchen, but it was empty. "Pierce?" he called, sticking his head back out into the hall. "Where'd you go?"

"In here!" he heard the old man call back. "In Mom's room."

Troy felt his stomach sink deeper into his bowels. He didn't like going in there. But, right now, he wanted to be alone even less.

Maybe words were more important to him than he was willing to admit. He swallowed the rest of his drink.

#

Pierce's mom's room had been on the bottom floor; she'd had trouble getting up and down the stairs in her twilight years and had protested bitterly at the idea of having to ride one of those stair lifts.

"The indignity of it!" she'd told Troy when he'd brought it up, half joking. She'd been a cool woman. He missed her.

Now that she was dead, the place that had been her room was used to house her "Energon pod". Pierce was standing in the middle of the room, holding it in his hands and looking into it lovingly. The bottle of rum sat, abandoned for now, on the small end table where the pod usually rested.

This place made him uncomfortable enough sober, this little mausoleum to a women Pierce didn't even think was dead. Drunk, it was almost unbearable. It made him envy Pierce's capacity for self-delusion, the simple elegance of dropping a couple hundred thousand dollars on a lava lamp and then never having to lay up thinking about death, about where we go and why, and if we don't go anywhere than what was the whole point of anything in the first place? And then you roll over onto your side and realize that it's 4:13 A.M. and you're probably not going to get to sleep tonight.

He shook his head roughly, trying to scatter his thoughts. A wave of nausea swept over him though, so he stopped.

"What are you doing?" he finally asked Pierce.

Pierce placed the glass tube back onto its altar. "Reflecting! I'm old and drunk I'm allowed," he said, picking his booze back up and turning to face Troy in the doorway.

"Oh, I didn't mean it like that…" Troy said, shamed by the anger in Pierce's tone.

"Oh, don't listen to me," Pierce said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I'm just a grump." There was an awkward silence, for a moment. "You know, you really do have a talent, Troy," Pierce said finally, walking over to him.

"Oh," Troy said, suddenly remembering the reason why he'd come to the mansion today in the first place. "It was really no big deal."

"No, really, you do. I never really had that, you know, something I was good at? Just a big fat inheritance, a pretty face, and an ass the size and shape of a baby pumpkin. And don't get me wrong," Pierce said quickly, throwing his arm around Troy's shoulder, the bottle of rum thudding against his chest. "All those things were great! But… a calling. That's a rare gift." He paused. "We should open up a business together!"

"What?" Troy asked, half-laughing in surprise. "Pierce, I'm… I'm still in school. I have- I don't want-"

"I know, I know," Pierce said, the enthusiasm already starting to ebb away from his voice. "You're 22. And in love. I just… I worry sometimes. About what's going to happen to you guys after… after I'm gone…"

The hair on the back of Troy's neck started to stand on end. This was not a conversation he wanted to have. "Oh, come on…" he mumbled, looking away.

"I just want to make sure you'll all be okay. And… and that you have something to remember me with."

"Pierce…" Troy said. "We all love you. You don't need to become business partners with each of us to prove it. You know that."

"I know," Pierce said, smiling. "You guys are more of a family to me than anyone I've ever known. Except for you, Mom," he said, over his shoulder to the glass tube. "You guys put up with me even when I'm being an asshole. I don't know why you do, but…" he swallowed. "Thanks Troy. For drinking with an old man."

"Anytime, Pierce."

"And think about my offer, would you?" Pierce added. "Only don't take too long."

Troy frowned. "Why not?"

"Come on, Troy," Pierce said, his voice sad. "The way I've lived? How much longer do you think I have?"

Troy started shaking his head again, slower this time. "No."

"I mean, I was already in pretty bad shape before the two broken legs and the pill addiction. And let's not pretend that my mind hasn't been going downhill lately…"

"Pierce!" Troy said forcefully. He'd screwed his eyes shut. There was a pounding his head that kept building, kept thud-thud-thudding against his skull louder and louder. He was going to throw up. He felt the saliva build up in his mouth, faster than he could swallow it. He remembered the advice Britta had given him, the first time they'd gotten high together, and tried to breathe.

He felt Pierce rubbing his back, and opened his eyes. He wasn't aware until then that he'd doubled over. "Hey! Are you okay? You look like you're going to puke."

He pulled in a lungful of air, and expelled it just as slowly. The little twisting shapes in the edges of his vision began to fade.

"I'm fine. It's okay," he said. And it was true. He'd gotten the physiological reaction of his body to the wave of panic he'd felt rising up in him under control. But his psyche was still reeling from the idea of the old man in a casket. Of Pierce, rotting under the ground. Of the same thing happening to him. Or to Britta.

That was just life, though. It was a circle, a system, and each part of the process required the other two. People were born. And they lived. And then they died. That's what made the whole thing beautiful; Pierce's mom had been right about that. There was nothing to fix, no magic speech to give. What were you supposed to do about that?

"Can I get you anything?" Pierce asked. Troy looked up at him. The old man was staring down at him, worry and guilt in his eyes.

Troy lifted his empty glass. "One more for the road?"

Pierce smiled, sadly. "I can do that."

#

The rest of that night was a blur. He vaguely remembered a car ride, remembered studying the red floral pattern of Britta's towels as he rested his cheek on the cool porcelain rim of her toilet as thin, warm fingers played through his hair.

He woke the next day in her bed. His shirt was gone. Had he puked on it, maybe? That sounded familiar.

"Morning sleepyhead," someone shouted.

"Ow," he said, squinting and sitting up. Someone handed him a glass of water and a pill. He swallowed one, and then the other, a little bit of the second spilling out of his mouth a bit and down onto his chest. It tasted really good. He smacked his lips, which felt dry and crackly. "What time is it?"

"It's 2:30." It was amazing how much it looked like Britta was whispering, when her voice lashed red hot across the surface of his mind. "Headache?"

"Yes. I am never going to drink any alcohol ever again." She stroked his cheek, giving him an exaggerated pout. "Don't mock me when I'm in pain."

She tittered a little at that. "You know what'd help?" she asked.

He raised an inquisitive eyebrow. She produced another glass tube from behind her back, different from the one from the one that had made him drink too much the previous night.

"Okay," he said.

#

He lay in her bed later, high, with Britta's head resting gently on his chest. She was talking about something important sounding, something about fictitious capital and banks and how they were fucking them all over. He was still too far gone to follow her, but between the aspirin and the weed her voice was now a soothing balm instead of an air horn. He craned his neck, reaching down to kiss the top of her head. It was good that the "living life" part of the equation could be so nice. It helped make up for how shitty the other two were.


	13. The Prescription, Part 1

_A/N: Sorry for the delay in the update (and I'm aware I've been saying that a lot lately. Sorry for that too.) My desktop died, along with my harddrive and a bunch of work on this fanfic, and it brought on another bout of writer's block._

_This chapter started to get a little longer than I'd intended so I've decided to break it in two. This'll also give me a chance to get more ahead and make future delays more unlikely (and I've already got what I intended as chapter 14 mostly finished, so I've already got a little bit of a buffer.)_

Abed Nadir inhaled, gently straightening his spine and rolling his shoulders down his back as his lungs expanded with life-giving air and his arms rose over his head. His eyes were shut, his focus inward, his mind following the motions of his body. He brought his hands down together and over his heart, feeling his chest open as his lungs emptied themselves, returning a part of himself out to the universe. His eyes opened. A couple of beats behind, Jeff straightened next to him, his face red from exertion.

The instructor stepped off her mat, making her usual noises of congratulations for making it through another class. It was their third together. She made her way over to the CD player in the corner to switch out the exercise music for something more relaxing and meditative. She'd learned to stop asking why Abed left early after the second class.

He rolled his mat up even as everyone else laid down, their faces and palms all pointed up towards the ceiling. He lowered the lights for them, on his way out of the classroom.

#

Abed lit a cigarette. He was grateful for the opportunity to indulge his vice in secret, but that wasn't the real reason for his early departure. He leaned against the front wall of the Greendale Community Center, pulling his coat tighter over his yoga clothes to better ward off the cold as he took a puff, pulling the nicotine laden smoke and the cool, pleasant buzz it brought into his lungs.

Meditation didn't come easy to him, at least not the quiet, reflective, inactive kind. His thoughts always chased each other around the inside of his mind when deprived of an outlet, exhausting him. He could do it, but it required quiet and peace, a place where felt contained, where he could feel physical barriers, at least, even if he didn't have the strength of will to create mental ones unaided.

Hence the Dreamatorium, Mark II.

Britta had called it a coping mechanism, and told him that if it helped him he should keep doing it. He could tell it had made her a little sad to think about, though. Especially when he'd told her that story about Jack and Brian.

His thoughts turned to his friend/therapist. She'd been more and more convinced, lately, that her "prescription" as she liked to call it, had solved his dilemma. That she'd managed to think a way out of his problems. And she was right, to an extent. He felt far better now than he did a month ago. But there was still as sense of… unease… gnawing away at his gut.

"Still don't like _shavasana_, huh?" a voice asked, startling him.

His head snapped his head in its direction. It was feminine, and familiar, and for a brief moment when he saw the woman standing there, the dark hair, the curves, he thought perhaps she had somehow felt his pain, been drawn to come find him. She knew he took these classes with Jeff, and when and where, maybe-

But it wasn't her. The hair was a couple of inches too short. And she was slightly too tall. And the face… he had trouble there, always, of seeing past the small incidental features to see the _gestalt _of what was really there, but he could tell it wasn't hers. He felt a twinge of irrational disappointment. Of course it wasn't her.

"It's Dawn." she said, no anger in the voice he recognized fully now. She'd always been understanding about his neurological disorders. More than that really; he suspected she was drawn to him specifically because they made the kind of no-strings sexual relationship she seemed to want easier to maintain. He could hear Britta, in his head, scolding him for that thought.

"Yes," he said, in answer to her original question. "I still can't… do it out in the open like that…" He took another drag of his cigarette before offering it to her. She declined.

"I'm trying to quit," she explained.

"That's smart," Abed said. He'd tried before, but the desire for that little rush of nicotine had always beat him out in the end. Britta had told him finding ways to reduce stress. Speaking of… "I'm sorry that I never contacted you after I just started not showing up, but-" he began, but she cut him off.

"Hey, you didn't owe me anything. That's not to say I'm disappointed to see you, though." Her eyes looked him up and down. "I didn't think I would again. But it looks like you're still doing yoga. Are you taking the beginner's class?"

"Yes. With a friend who's new to yoga," he explained.

"Ah, a 'friend,'" she said, a little sadly. She leaned against the wall, next to him. "That makes sense. I take it that means you aren't going to want to hook up anymore?"

"Jeff isn't that kind of friend." He dropped the cigarette and ground it out beneath his heel. The class would be getting out and he didn't want Jeff to see he was smoking. "And no, it doesn't."

Her mouth curved upwards.

#

Jeff relaxed, easing into the soft coolness of his mat. The sounds of the ocean filling the room were artificial, but totally convincing. He could almost feel the waves pulling at his toes. Almost feel the cool sea breeze in his hair. He smiled. He'd never seen the ocean in his life. Maybe he should stop seeing that as a missed opportunity. After all the ocean was a lot older than he was.

"Allow the thoughts to flow across your mind," the instructor said. "Observe them, as you would the clouds, and allow them to pass through you without judgment."

He couldn't understand why Abed always ditched this part. It was just so… still and soothing. Then again, he couldn't understand how the first 50 minutes could be so easy for him. Each movement so graceful, so perfectly in rhythm with the next. Jeff had to struggle just to pay attention to "where his breath was" or whatever it was the instructor kept talking about.

But now he was being competitive. He was trying not to do that. He focused on the feeling of waves again, of waxing and waning.

#

Jeff left the classroom feeling… good. Like a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He looked around. Abed wasn't in the hall, so he continued on, out of the Community Center. It was chilly out, so he pulled his jacket on over his tank top.

"Abed?" he called. He heard a noise to his right and turned. "Oh, there you are. Uh-"

Abed was leaning against the wall next to a very pretty looking girl. She must have been in her early twenties. He felt a rush of hormones which he immediately felt bad about.

"Who's your friend?" he asked.

"I'm Dawn," she said, pushing herself off the wall and bending over to grab a blue, rolled up yoga mat from the concrete next to her. "And the fact that you just got out means I'm about to be late for class." She smiled at his friend. "I'll see you around, Abed."

She pushed past him, and was gone into the building. He watched her walk. He suddenly realized, maybe, the reason to his strong reaction to her presence. From behind she looked a lot like-

"Jeff," Abed said suddenly, and he snapped his head back around. He realized he'd been staring. "Falafel?"

If Abed was judgmental, Jeff couldn't tell. He felt like he owed it to him not to pry about whoever Dawn was.

"I, uh, actually need to take a rain check on that this week buddy, sorry," Jeff said. "My new therapist is kind of a handful about appointments and today at lunch was the only time I could get him."

"Oh," Abed said. "That's okay. Rain check?"

"Sure," Jeff answered. He paused. "Listen… you were right about this helping. Yoga, I mean. I feel… more relaxed lately. But are you okay, Abed?"

Abed frowned, quirking his head. "What do you mean?"

"I mean… I know it hasn't been an easy year for you. I can tell you like to pretend like that's not true around me for some reason," he said, and Abed looked away, "but I can tell things are bothering you. And… I know you've been getting therapy with Britta."

Abed was quiet for a little while before speaking. When he did, his voice was a little weaker than Jeff was used to hearing. "I don't know… it's just… I've always told you about how I'm afraid I'll be left behind while you guys grow and change, right? I guess that feelings just been getting… more and more acute."

It was Jeff's turn to frown. "What does Britta say about that?"

"She thinks I'm an idiot. She doesn't say it, not in so many words, but it's obvious she thinks I'm limiting myself."

"You don't sound so sure."

"That's because I'm not."

Jeff exhaled heavily. "Well… for what it's worth Abed, I've always found that we tend to underestimate ourselves. No matter who we are." It felt important to him, suddenly, to communicate this to Abed.

The younger man swallowed. "I… appreciate that. And I hope you're both right. It's just that…" his frown deepened. "Sometimes I worry that Britta looks out, sees clear skies, and thinks the danger has passed. When really, we're just in the middle of the eye of the storm, and the worst is still to come."

"See, it's talk like that that makes me concerned Abed," Jeff said, lightly, trying to break the tension. Abed smiled, so he considered himself at least partly successful.

"I'm going to get going," he said. "If you're sure you're not going to come to Dad's with me, I mean. I have shooting to do this afternoon, and I'd like to get to it sooner rather than later."

"No, I understand. Don't let me keep you," Jeff said. "Just… I don't think of you as static, Abed. You've grown a lot, since I've known you. I mean, you're alive, right? It's what we do, no matter what our circumstances are. We can't help it."

Abed seemed to consider that. Jeff held his arms out, and he accepted his offer, moving in for a tight hug. When they broke, Jeff Winger felt a lot better.

It was a good day, so far. He'd discussed it with his therapist when they met later.


	14. The Prescription, Part 2

"Okay, listen, idiots," Jerry said, exasperated, from behind his desk. "We _know_ you did it. Even if we didn't have witnesses saying they saw you going into the Meeting Hall with a duffel bag after hours, it'd be pretty darn obvious that you were behind it."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Greg. He was the ringleader of the small group of students who still clung, stubbornly, to the old way of doing things. The way that emphasized exclusivity, that said that air conditioner repairmen were a step above the rest. They continued to wear their old uniforms, even though all the other students had long ago started wearing casual clothes to the annex.

There were three of them there, now, in Jerry's office. Leaning in the corner, behind Jerry, Troy glared at them, trying to look intimidating. They didn't seem scared. Or contrite.

"You guys couldn't even come up with something more original than graffiting 'Murray Lives'?" Jerry continued. "No one thinks he's dead! He's just in jail!"

The three students said nothing.

"For _murdering_ someone!"

"Shouldn't you be unclogging a toilet somewhere?" Greg asked, inspecting his fingernails.

"Okay, dickhead," Troy said, suddenly, heat surging into his face. He'd put up with enough shit from Greg, given him plenty of second chances this year. He wasn't going to let him talk to his friend like that. "Get the fuck out."

Greg blanched, his calm façade wilting in the face of Troy's anger. "Y-you mean get out of this office…?"

"No, shit for brains, I mean from the school! I'm expelling you." Troy paused, unsure suddenly. "Or, uh, excommunicating you, whichever." He looked over at Thornsten, who'd insisted on sitting in on this meeting. "I can do that, right?"

"Er, yes, Truest Repairman," the priest said. "You can."

"Good." He turned back to Greg. "Pack your shit up and get out. I'm done with you."

Greg looked around, at his two friends, at Jerry, at High Priest Thornsten.

"They aren't going to help you," Troy told him. "Get!"

He slunk out of the room, a dazed expression on his face. His two lackeys watched him go, their earlier defiance gone. They looked scared.

"You two," Troy said, pointing at them. "Let this be a lesson to you. Quit being dipshits. Get back to class." They retreated too, following their now ex-leader out of Jerry's office.

Thornsten crossed to the other side of the desk, taking Greg's old seat. "That may have been a little… harsh… Truest Repairman."

"I disagree," Troy said. "I don't like bullies, and Greg made it pretty clear he wasn't going to change his ways."

"Troy's right," Jerry said. "He's been in here every other day, practically. Remember when he was harassing students who weren't wearing the old uniforms?"

"We put a stop to that," Thornsten said. He held up a hand, cutting off Troy's response. "All I'm saying, Truest Repairman, is that you have to understand where these students are coming from. The changes you have mandated are… well… they take time to adjust to."

"Greg wasn't making that any easier," Troy said. "He was a troublemaker."

"I bow to Your judgment, Your Coolness," Thornsten said, lowering his head. Troy hated the way he could hear the capitalized Y. It was creepy. "It's just… some of your decisions… Like allowing those Greendale students to film in the Meeting Hall-"

"We're all Greendale students, Thornsten," Troy corrected, quickly. "Speaking of, I wanted to go say to hi to Abed on his first day of shooting, so, if we're done here…?"

Jerry nodded. Thornsten still didn't look happy, but he nodded, too.

"Cool." He softened a little. "Look… Thornsten… I know this must be weird for you, getting a dude who doesn't even really believe in your religion as your Messiah. But if you're right, and God really is a repairman or whatever, maybe that's what he wanted? Maybe he thought you guys got… too arrogant, or whatever."

Thornsten looked thoughtful. Troy clapped him on the shoulder on his way out of the room.

#

The Meeting Hall was bustling with activity. Someone had hung a curtain over the portion of the wall where Greg had graffitied his message of impotent defiance People rushed to and fro, setting up cameras, decorating the set. There must have been at least a dozen people working here. Troy was struck with the contrast between this production, with all it's organization and complexity, it's big, impressive looking cameras, and the much more simple, two-person shoots he and Abed used to do.

He didn't see his friend around anywhere.

"Hey man," a voice asked. "What's up?"

He turned. The voice came from a tall, blond man who he judged to be about his own age. He was carrying a thick stack of different colored papers.

"Yeah," Troy said. "Hey. I'm-"

"Troy Barnes, I know. You're Abed's friend." The stranger stuck out his hand. "I remember, from that pillow war. That was awesome. I'm Mark. Mark Millot. Rhymes with merlot."

Troy shook his hand.

"Abed says you're the one who got us this room. That's awesome, man."

"Yeah…" Troy said, unnerved that this guy knew so much more about him then he did of him. "Is he around, by the way? I wanted to talk to him."

"He texted me that he was running late. Yoga went long or something? I don't know."

_Abed does yoga?_ Troy thought to himself. "Oh…" he said, pretending that he knew that. "Right."

"He should be here soon, he was super excited to start shooting. Have you read the script yet? We've been working really hard on it."

"I, uh, don't even know what the movie's about," Troy answered. "Abed hasn't really talked about it with me much…" _Or at all._

"It's gonna be awesome man. Total old school film noir. We're gonna shoot it in black and white and everything. Abed does a great Bogart. It's going to kill at the film festival."

Troy frowned. "Noir?" He really liked noir. He and Abed had plowed through the Bogart canon together, back when they'd first started hanging out. _The Big Sleep._ _The Maltese Falcon. Casablanca._ Even the weird ones, like _In a Lonely Place _(Abed had _really_ liked that one). It'd been his first exposure to the genre, but something about it, something about the way the heroes always struggled against a cynical, bleak world that didn't give a shit about them, had really stuck with him.

"Yeah!" Mark said, excitedly. "I think he got the idea from the last paintball game. That's where we met, actually. I guess we really bonded over it, cause once the A/V Department started up again this year-"

_Cause of me,_ Troy thought, bitterly.

"-he asked me to come and write it with him."

"Sounds… _awesome_," Troy said, not caring if Mark picked up on the mocking quality in his voice.

He apparently didn't. "Yeah, man," he gushed.

Troy was beginning to realize that he really did not like Mark Millot.

#

Abed opened the door to the A/C Repair Annex in a rush. He was late, and he knew it. All he was missing was just the initial setup, he knew, and he trusted the people he'd chosen to work with enough to do that without him. It still seemed… unprofessional.

He wasn't entirely sure he regretted his decision, though, to wait the hour until Dawn's yoga class got out. And the half-hour they spent together after that, either. He smiled, running a hand through his hair. His stomach was already complaining that he'd skipped on lunch, but other parts of his anatomy were much more… content.

He was shaken out of that pleasant thought upon entering his new studio when he saw Troy there, talking with Mark. _Uh oh_, he thought. Troy had been dropping less and less subtle hints lately that he wanted to be involved in Abed's movie in some capacity. And Mark could be… hard to take… in the best of circumstances sometimes. It wasn't his fault. He was just kind of… pretentious. Which was fine for Abed. A lot of people would probably say that of him, too, with all his pop culture knowledge and love of homage.

But Troy might not see it that way. His friend had always had a jealous streak.

"Troy!" he said, keeping his voice light as he approached them. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"Abed!" Troy said. "Yeah, I was looking for you."

Mark stood there, grinning. Abed shot him a pointed look.

"Oh, right," he said. "Uh, I guess I'll just go check in with Kelly, make sure she's got everything she needs." He wandered off.

"So," Troy said. "I know it seems like you've got things… all set here, but I just wanted to see if you wanted any help. I could be an extra or something! Like some mob boss's goon, or whatever?"

"Troy…" Abed said slowly. His friend frowned. Abed hated this. He hated confrontation. He could hear Britta's voice in his head, though, telling him that it was important to set boundaries. "I was… I kind of wanted this to be… my own thing. You know? Something I could have to myself."

"Oh…" Troy said. The frown had gone, but Abed knew, from experience, that that wasn't necessarily a good thing. "Like yoga, you mean."

"Ah," Abed said, feeling his stomach drop. He winced. He hadn't mentioned that to his friend, either, afraid that he'd want in on something he'd really just intended to be something between him and Jeff. That'd probably been a mistake. "Listen-"

Troy sighed. "No, I'm sorry. That was mean. And I get it, I do. I just… I really liked making movies with you man."

Abed felt his expression soften. "I do too, Troy. Maybe we can shoot something this weekend? Something quick, and fun, just like we used to?"

"Yeah, maybe…" Troy said. His mouth was still a straight line, though, his face impossible for him to read. "Well, I'll get out of your hair. You seem like you've got a lot of work to do."

Abed watched him walk away, hands jammed into his pockets, back slightly slumped. He thought about storms again, and the horizon.


	15. For She's a Jolly Good Fellow Part 1

"And, students, that is why," Duncan slurred, "Why Women Leave _redefined_ the field of evolutionary psychology."

From the middle row Britta Perry rolled her eyes as hard as she could, fuming silently. Duncan had shown signs of having fallen off the wagon for a while now, but it was indisputable at this point. And he was wasting her god damn fucking time with this shit.

Her last fume may have been less silent than she thought, because Duncan whirled on her suddenly. "What?!" he demanded, red-faced. "Do you disagree with my analysis of the fairer sex, Ms. Perry?" He was slightly cross-eyed as he stared at her.

"No!" she objected. "I mean… yes! But that's not why I'm pissed off at you right now. I'm pissed off because you're drunk in the middle of class! This is supposed to be a psych lab and we haven't done any experiments in two weeks!"

There was a murmur of agreement from the rest of the class. In the corner, Garret raised his hand. Duncan ignored him.

"Oh, and suddenly that's such a crime, is it?" he asked. "Funny, I don't remember you complaining about it when I was instructing you in Anthropolgy!"

"Well, I actually want to fucking do this you fucking jag!" she said, her voice rising now. "I want to be a therapist, and you rambling on about how much your Mommy didn't love you isn't fucking helping!"

Duncan stared at her for a moment. "Everyone else, out. Out! Class ended ten minutes anyone, you dunces!" No one moved for a moment. "GET OUT!" he shouted, scattering them and sending them packing for the exits. Britta tried not to let on how uncomfortable she suddenly felt. "So…" he asked, slowly. "If you 'actually want to do this', I imagine you want to get into graduate school, yes?"

"Uh…" Britta said slowly, not trusting him. "Yes?"

"Well.." the Professor of Psychology said, sitting at his desk and putting his feet up and smiling drunkenly. "I might be able to help there…"

"Okay," she said, holding up hand. "I am not sleeping with you to get into grad school. Full stop."

"Wha-" he sputtered. "No! First off, who said anything about getting you in? What I am offering you is a very rare, very valuable, letter of recommendation from one Ian Duncan. And as much as you poo poo my journal articles-," she snorted, but he just continued on, louder, "-they make me a very influential member of the academic community. And my opinion, as a result, will carry a lot of weight."

"Still not fucking you," Britta said.

"All I want," he said, ignoring her, "is a little look-see at the patient notes for the very mentally-ill friend you've been treating."

"How did you-" she caught herself, too late. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes you do," he said, confidently. "Abed Nadir. He would make an excellent case subject for a paper I'm writing about the infanticidal impulse in women."

"I think Lars von Trier beat you to that subject a while ago, Duncan," Britta said, standing and grabbing her backpack. "And if I did have a patient, there is zero chance I would share any information about him with you. You are the most unethical, repugnant, cowardly-"

"Ah, young Oedipus joins us!" Duncan interrupted her, looking past her to the doorway of the classroom. "Welcome!"

Britta turned. Troy was standing there, grinning confusedly.

"Uh?" he asked.

"Don't call him that, jackass!" she objected. Duncan had been giving her shit about her relationship ever since he'd spied them kissing in the cafeteria. She walked over, grabbing his hand. "Come on, Troy."

#

"What'd he call me?" Troy asked, once they'd made their way out into the hall.

"Don't worry about it," Britta said, "He's just being an asshole."

"Is he hitting on you again?"

"God I wish," Britta muttered under her breath.

"Uh, what?" Troy laughed, grinning.

"I wish it was that simple!" she corrected quickly. She felt heat rush into her face; annoyance flare up inside her gut. "Now you're being an asshole!"

"Hey, come on," Troy said, putting an arm around her. "I didn't mean it like that. You're the one who's always teasing me when I do that with Abed. What d'ya call them again? Fraudulent slips?"

"Freudian," she corrected, smiling a little now. It was true; she did do that a lot. _You're not mad at __him__, _she reminded herself. She wasn't really even mad at Duncan, really. Alright, she was, actually, but she knew that he wasn't the reason behind her short temper. Troy pushed the double doors that lead out to the quad open. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped at you."

He squeezed her tighter. "Don't worry about it. You feeling okay? You seem down."

She worked herself a little bit closer, under his arm. "I'm… a little on edge today, that's all."

"Oh," Troy said. "Is it…" he made a circular motion in front of his crotch. "Lady business?"

"'Lady business?'" she asked, incredulous. "No, the lady's pantsuits and shoulder pads are hanging up safely in the closet today, thank you very much." She considered, briefly, telling him why it was important that her cycle had actually started earlier that week. But she didn't. Better to leave that till later… till they were alone. "It's just…"

"Hey, Troy!" a voice called from behind them. Turning, Britta saw a blond haired young man waving to at them from behind a folding metal table. He looked… familiar. And not in a good way. Draped over the front of his table was a banner that read:

THE A/V DEPARTMENT PRESENTS:

STUDENT FILM FEST 2012

"Oh… hey Mark…" Troy said without a lot of enthusiasm. "How's it going?"

"Great!" He said, his excitement much more genuine. Britta was slightly confused by Troy's hesitation. Usually he was the more sociable of the two of them. "Just promoting the film festival. Are you gonna come? You can bring, uh-" he turned to her, blank faced.

"Britta," she said, offering him her hand.

"That's right!" he said, shaking it. "You were doing fundraising for the BP oil spill right? Mark Millot."

Right. That's how she knew him. He'd been one of those pervs throwing money at her and Annie when they'd had that stupid fight over Jeff.

"Well… we're late for class… so…" Britta said, lamely. Troy just stood there being unhelpful.

"Right, right," Mark said, his tone apologetic. He handed her a flier. "Well, like I said, you guys should stop by. Some kid's working a documentary about fracking that you might find interesting."

"That sounds great!" she said, pulling on Troy's hand and tugging him towards Boechester Hall, where their class met. "Well, uh, see you around?"

"Yeah, see ya!" he said, waving after them.

"That guy's a fucking asshole…" Troy muttered, after he was out of earshot. That surprised her, a little. Troy wasn't usually one to hold a grudge, and Mark seemed nice enough, putting aside what a pig she knew he was.

"How do you know each other?" she asked.

"He and Abed have been working on movies together a ton recently," he explained. _Ah,_ she thought, _that explains it_. "I don't know how he can stand that dude. He's so pretentious. 'Ooh, my name rhymes with a wine. Ooh hoo, I'm so fancy!'" Troy paused. "Abed hasn't… mentioned him, has he?"

"Troy…" Britta said, reaching up to massage the ridge of her nose.

"What?" he asked, frowning.

"Can we just… pretend you spent ten minutes badgering me about this before giving up? Because I really cannot handle it today, okay?"

"I-" a look of guilt crossed his face. "Sorry…"

And now she just felt bad. Sighing, she snaked an arm around his waist and into the pocket of his jeans, pulling him close. "Let's just forget about it. Let's not let Mark Millot ruin Creative Writing for us, 'kay?"

#

"I see a lot of new faces in the class today," Mrs. Estrada said. "This tends to happen as the deadline to add classes approaches. Rumors about so called 'blow-off' classes tend to spread quickly at Greendale, I've come to find."

The idea to take a writing class had been Troy's, and so far it had turned out pretty well. Mrs. Estrada was a nice woman, and a good teacher, if a bit cloying at times.

"Well, I am here to tell you the rumor's are true: all you have to do to pass this class are show up and write something. There are of course written assignments, but they are not graded beyond a pass/fail basis. Every other Wednesday, you will turn in whatever you have written to my desk at the front of the class there. There are two boxes. Place your assignment in the top one if you are alright with it being read aloud in class. Place it in the bottom one if you want for just me to read it. There are written instructions near the boxes, if you don't remember them."

Britta rolled her eyes. Did she really think anyone would forget something that simple?

"Throughout the week, we'll read some of your creative works out loud, anonymously. Community college brings swaths of people from different background together, but all too often we don't take the time to stop and listen to each other's stories. Changing that is one of the points of this class."

Britta had thought this idea had been a little strange, when Mrs. Estrada had first introduced it, but by now she was a willing convert. The readings in this class were always interesting, and never in the same way. Sometimes they were sad. Sometimes they opened Britta's eyes to some part of Greendale that she'd never considered before. Sometimes, especially when Mrs. Estrada picked one of Troy's papers (and Britta had gotten pretty good at picking those out by now) they were funny. So far, none of them had been hers though, because she had always chickened out and put her papers into the top box, just like she'd done two days ago.

"The rest of the time, we'll break into small groups to do peer review and talk about what we've read that day. So, I hope that is all perfectly clear. Right now, I'd like to introduce today's reader. Vicki, come up here, please," Vicki Cooper stood up, smiling shyly and making her way to the front of the class. "Vicki and I talked in my office hours this week, which you should all feel free to stop by during, and she expressed an interest in doing this weeks readings. And luckily enough, I received a very brave, very well written piece that I thought would be perfect for her to read." She handed the younger woman a typewritten piece of paper.

"Thanks, Mrs. Estrada," Vicki said, blushing and glancing over at her boyfriend, who was seated in the front row. "Alright. So… I guess this paper doesn't have a title?" She cleared her throat, and began reading:

"Her mother had bought her the cat when she turned six, which was five years ago now to the day," Vicki began. "It was another in a long line of attempts by her mother to try and impose a more traditionally feminine outlook on her only daughter."

"Oh shit," Britta said to herself. She knew those lines. She'd written those lines.

"What's wrong?" Troy asked, leaning across his desk to whisper to her.

"Hey," Fat Neil said, turning around in his seat in the front row to glare at them. "Could you guys be quiet? Vicki's trying to read." Troy mumbled an apology, chastened. Britta said nothing.

Vicki gave Neil a quick, grateful smile before continuing on. "And just like the Barbie doll she'd received for her fifth birthday that she'd ended up exploding in the back yard with a firecracker stolen from her oldest brother, this gift ended up backfiring. But neither of them had known that at the time.

"He'd just been a kitten then, when she'd taken him out of her mother's hands and cradled him to her chest. Not the d-" Vicki stumbled for a moment, frowning, but quickly recovered. "Not the dead, limp thing, dried blood caked into its now matted white fur, that was lying in front of her now."

Britta kept her eyes locked on the chalkboard at the front of the room, not daring to look around.. She'd been drunk and high out of her mind when she'd written this piece of shit. And yes, okay, maybe the aftereffects of that had something to do with her putting it in the wrong box. But why did Mrs. Estrada have to choose this story to read aloud? It was so...

"He'd been missing for a day now. Her brother had left the door open, yet again, but this time she hadn't been there to stop the cat from getting out. She'd yelled at her father later, tears streaming down her cheeks, when he'd told her coldly that as a lifelong indoor cat, he was almost certainly already dead. She'd called him a liar, and told him that she hated him.

"She could admit to herself that she'd been wrong about the first part, standing now in the field out behind her school. The cat had been dead for awhile, that was pretty obvious. Something had torn his throat out. Something with sharp, cruel teeth. She could picture it in her mind, scaly and inhuman, its eyes lit up by an unthinking, reptilian hunger.

"She knew she should go find someone, a teacher, the principal, a janitor even. They could give him a little burial, a place to rest peacefully safe from the maggots and the flies. But she didn't. She moved on, continuing her journey back to her father's house. She didn't tell anyone what had happened to her that day."

Vicki stopped, clearing her throat. "Uh, and that's the end of it, I guess." She turned to look at Mrs. Estrada.

_Don't move. Don't show any emotion. Nobody except you and the teacher knows you wrote it. It's fine. Keep your head down during the discussion and you should be able to get out of here with a minimum of-_

But then she heard a choked sobbing sound coming from her right, and as much as she wanted to continue to bore a hole into the "s" in Mrs. Estrada's name, she knew she couldn't. She turned. Troy sat there, one hand clapped over his mouth, tears just starting to stream down her face. _God damn it_, she thought, feeling her heart twist itself into a knot. She reached out, rubbing his shoulder. "Hey..." she whispered, the corners of her vision clouding with stinging, tickling tears. "It's okay."

He turned, then, to look at her, and she watched as his eyes widened, his face contort even more sharply. He sobbed again, louder, and pushed his chair back, standing and blurting to the class, "Sorry. Sorry. I have to go- bathroom-"

"That's- that's alright Mr. Barnes," Mrs. Estrada said, coming back to the front of the class, but he was already half-way out the door. "Now, does anyone have any thoughts to share about that piece? Ms. Perry, are you-"

Britta didn't stop to answer her. She pushed the door to the classroom open and followed Troy out into the hall.

#

He was still crying when she found him, standing next to a locker near the men's bathroom. She approached him slowly, unsure of what to say. She felt a strange mixture of emotions. Guilt at hurting him like this (as she tended to do), definitely. But also… a kind of closeness. Kind of like what she felt back when she thought he'd been… when she thought they'd shared the same pain.

Luckily, he took the decision out of her hands when he saw her. He quickly closed the distance between them and threw his arms around her, burying his face in the crook of her neck. She held him, rubbing his back while she made sympathetic noises.

"What was his name?" he managed to choke out finally. She tensed, confused, thinking for a moment that he'd managed to guess at the deeper meaning behind that stupid story. "The cat, I mean."

"Oh," she said. "That story was… it wasn't really about… what it was about…" She winced at how lame that sounded. "I mean, I had a cat when I was a kid and I'm pretty sure my Mom really did expect it to help me be less of a tomboy but…"

Britta heard a door open behind her and the _click-clack-click_ of someone in heels walking down the hall towards them. Troy let go of her quickly, and she turned to see Mrs. Estrada, a concerned look on her face.

"Are the two of you alright?" she asked.

"Yeah," Troy said, sniffling a little. "Sorry about running out and everything it's just…"

"Don't apologize Mr. Barnes, it's quite alright." She turned to Britta. "I take it, Ms. Perry, that you uh, did not intend for that to be read aloud?"

"Um… not really no. I guess I must have put it in the wrong box." Britta felt her cheeks redden. _I am such a fucking dumbass_.

"I'm sorry about that, then. Maybe I need to come up with a better system…" Mrs. Estrada shook her head, quickly. "Never mind about that now, though. Why don't you two take the rest of class off? Go be young and in love. Only… Ms. Perry?"

"Yeah…?" Britta asked, hesitantly. Mrs. Estrada put a hand on her arm.

"Did you really never tell anyone about what happened to you that day? Do you need… someone to talk to about it with?"

She glanced at Troy quickly. He looked confused by the question. "Oh, no," Britta said. "I mean… I appreciate it but it happened a long time ago and…" She swallowed, a sudden wave of emotion sweep over her. _Why did this have to happen __today__?_ "I got help."

Mrs. Estrada smiled, pulling her hand back. "Alright, I'm glad to hear that. Here. This is your original." She handed Britta a piece of paper covered in handwriting she recognized as her own. "I thought it was very powerful. And I really did think it was brave of you to write it, even if you didn't intend to share it in class."

"I… thanks," Britta said, looking down at the floor. She felt Troy lay an arm over her shoulder.

"Well, I've got to get back to class. _Buenos tardes._" She shot Britta one last, weak smile, then turned and walked away.

"So," Troy asked, after Mrs. Estrada had re-entered the classroom. "I don't have any other classes today. What do you want to do? Go get some food? Catch a movie?"

"Do you know what I really want to do right now?" Britta asked, stroking his face. He seemed to be better spirits now. He'd stopped crying, and even though his voice was still a little wavering he was smiling again. It made her happy.

"What?"

#

She dug the blade of her knife into the flesh of the apple, cutting out the core and carving out a wide opening that went about halfway through the red fruit. There was a time, when she was younger, where she'd made a game out of what she could do this with: fruit, soda cans, plastic bottles. She'd gotten good at it too; it brought her a lot of respect with the stoner crowd in high school. As she got older, and pot became more and more of a solitary experience, she'd stopped bothering. But she liked to impress Troy, now. To show him he wasn't the only one who was good with his hands.

"I was… nine. Maybe ten? I'm not sure. My neighbors had this dog, this old Cocker Spaniel named Peanut. He was really old, older than I was. And he got sick," Troy said as he watched her work. They were sitting in the back seat of her car, parked out behind the Gymnasium, back in the corner flanked on three sides by fence and bush and building. "They had to put him down."

"I'm sorry," Britta said. She cut a much smaller hole out of the apple's side, making sure it connected with her first incision.

Troy shrugged, frowning. "I mean, it happens to everything eventually, right? I didn't really get that at the time, though. I cried so hard, the day they took him to the vet. I was still at it by the time my Dad got home for work. He told me to man up, to stop acting like a baby about a dog that wasn't even mine."

"Dads fucking suck," Britta observed as she cut a third hole, the carb, into the apple.

"I hear that."

"Hand me the grinder?"

"Damn, you made that fast!" Troy said as he passed it to her. She knew that it really wasn't that big of a deal, that all she'd done was poke three holes in the thing. She blushed anyhow. She opened the grinder and tapped a generous amount of weed into the top of her newly crafted pipe. "Anyway… my Grandma, the one on my Mom's side, the one that wasn't evil, she was having health problems at the time so that's probably why I reacted the way I did. She uh… she died maybe half a year after that…"

"Well, I'm sorry my dumb story reminded you of that."

"Britta…" Troy said, sadly. "Don't do that. Don't undersell yourself. Mrs. Estrada was right; that was really good writing."

She couldn't think of anything to say to that, so she brought the apple to her lips and torched the top of it with her lighter. She watched the fire consume the cannabis, watched the orange and red flames lick across it, blackening it and turning into ash. She released the carb, pulling the smoke into her lungs, feeling the familiar, tickling heat of it go down her throat and enter her lungs.

She exhaled, blowing the cloud of smoke up towards the roof of her car, watching it twist and dance around itself in the afternoon light. "God I needed that." She could already feel the pressure that had been pressing against her eyeballs all day start to slacken, could hear the cacophony that was her brain finally start to relax into a soothing buzz. She passed the apple to Troy, then laid her head in his lap as she watched him imitate her. "I- I know I've been doing this a lot lately it's just that-" She closed her eyes. "I always get like this, around this time of year. Around today."

"Today? What's so special about October 19th?" Troy asked after he'd exhaled.

"It's…" she opened her eyes again, looking up at him, at his stupid beautiful face that was etched with concern as he gazed down at her. Why did she not want to tell him? "It's my birthday…" She took another toke, grateful for the excuse to stop talking.

"Oh." He swallowed, taking the pipe back.

"What?" she asked, gazing up at him. She frowned. He was getting sad again, and it was probably all her fault. She stroked his leg with the back of her hand.

"I just… I've always known you must have had a hard childhood…" He swallowed again. "Just, you know… because of the way you always seem ready to be disappointed by people. The way you're always the first to cut yourself down. The way you get sad sometimes and you won't tell me why."

Britta didn't say anything.

"And… it's just… in that story…the one that wasn't about what it was about…"

"Yeah…"

"Well… it was the girl's birthday in that story, too…"

"Yeah…" She felt tears start to well up, unbidden, in her eyes. But they didn't feel painful, now.

"And… well… I don't want to pry… 'cause I can tell you don't really want to talk about it, but…" He looked back down at her. "I just… after Mrs. Estrada asked if you ever told anyone about what happened…" He swallowed again. "I remembered that lie I made up back in that Actor Inside class, about my uncle, you know, touching me…"

"Troy…" Britta said, sitting up against him and cupping his face. She thought he might've guessed why after Mrs. Estrada had been so… concerned. She didn't think he'd connect it back to that day.

"No," he said, grabbing her hand. "It makes me feel sick to my stomach to think about. About… about what you must have gone through when I did that… About how… about how I was just another one of those people who ended up disappointing you…"

She wrapped both her hands around his, bringing it to her mouth. "Troy…" she repeated, quieter.

He looked at her, his eyes round and wet, his forehead creased where his eyebrows knit together.

"Just…" Britta buried her head into his chest. She screwed her eyes shut, felt the tears slip out of them anyhow. "Just hold me, okay?"

He did. She sniffed as she felt his arms close in around her, pulling her up into his lap. She felt herself shaking, felt the carefully constructed control that'd been slipping out of her hands all day finally give up the ghost. She sobbed, crying for that 11 year old girl who's childhood was stolen from her in that depressing little diner; who had to learn, far too early, just how rapacious and uncaring the world really is.

Troy laid his chin on the top of her head, squeezing her tighter. She nuzzled in closer, appreciating the solidity of him. The reassurance it brought, the knowledge that he was there for her even if all he could do was this. "It's okay…" he whispered, over and over again, as he rocked her gently back and forth in his arms.

She wasn't sure how long they stayed like that for, how long it took for her sadness to exhaust itself. Eventually though, she pulled away from him, rubbing at her eyes. "Thanks…" she mumbled, not looking at him. He stroked her face.

"There's nothing in the world that makes me happier than helping you feel better," he said, with complete earnestness. She felt heat rush into her face, felt her tongue tie itself up inside her mouth. She grabbed the pipe from where it had fallen on the floor of the car, unsure of what else to do. "I just wish I could've gotten you something for your birthday…"

She smiled as she sprinkled more weed into the top of the apple. "Well… it's different for you I guess. You never got to celebrate birthdays growing up. My mom would always make a huge deal about mine even after… after what happened happened…" She coughed, clearing a little bit of phlegm out of her throat. "It's probably why I usually try and pretend that it doesn't exist."

"I guess that makes sense…" he said as he watched her take another hit. "Still, maybe-"

She never did find out whatever his plan to cheer her up was because he shut up when she brought her face close to his. His lips parted, and she lunged at him, kissing him, feeling the heat of his lips, the way he flinched away from her into his chair in surprise. She exhaled, pushing the smoke from her lungs into his as her tongue ravaged the inside of his mouth. She put her all into the kiss, wanting him to know how much she cared about him. How much he made her feel.

By the time she pulled back, she was seeing spots in the corners of her vision.

"Jesus…" he said, gasping.

"You know…" she said, kissing at his neck. "I think you might be right… presents are always nice. I left myself a little present for today, actually. Do you know what it is?"

"W-what?" he asked between moans as she worked a hand into his pants, gripping his hardness.

"I started taking birth control this week…" she whispered, unzipping his jeans as she nibbled on his ear lobe. She pushed them down his hips, exposing his boxers.

"Britta… wait…" he said, feebly. "Are you sure- are you sure you want to-"

"Shut the fuck up, Troy," she said, without malice, pulling him down on top of her as she pulled her own pants off. "Shut up and fuck me." He stopped resisting after that. His hand reached under her shirt, massaging her right breast as he kissed her. After a bit of fumbling, both their lower bodies were naked and exposed. They didn't bother trying to disrobe further than that. It wasn't worth the effort and time it would have taken.

He ran a hand through her pubic hair and she shuddered at the feeling of him pulling at her. Troy's thumb found her clit as his body pressed her into the cushions of the car seat. She whimpered, grabbing at his broad shoulders. "Don't stop," she gasped.

"Never," he said, as he worked his fingers inside of her. "Never."

She felt his erection, thick and hard, as he pawed at her. That irresistible, irrepressible heat was starting to build up inside of her, and she bucked under him, writhing. "Put your fucking cock in me," she breathed.

He shifted, adjusting himself so his pelvis lined up with hers. She felt him press at her opening, the head of his shaft just start to part her pussy. She pulled at him, bringing his body forward, over hers, forcing him to thrust downwards so that his cock pushed into her clit as he penetrated her. She mewled, arching her back, reveling in the sensation of his bare skin against hers. In the way his cock pulled and pushed against her folds, the way he dragged the sensitive, velvety skin of her cunt along with him as he pulled out of her. How did she ever put up with condoms for so long? How did she resist the feel of him, naked, against her?

She brought her legs together between his, squeezing his penis. She felt the pressure of him against her clitoris, felt the friction of their movements draw pleasure and ecstasy out of her. The heat of it, of their fucking, kept building. It started at her clit as it slid with exquisite, wet friction against the hard length of his dick before pressing into his pelvis. It crested and peaked, slowly building, spreading out until it had consumed her pelvis, her belly, her legs, blending with the scratchy feeling of her nipples against her bra as Troy's chest pressed against hers as he continued to thrust into her. She always got this, when she made love high. Always felt like the pleasure expanded and then reduced into a single, undeniable point of tension, over and over again.

But here, now, she felt something blocking her. Something getting in the way, preventing her release. It got worse and worse the longer it went on, becoming more and more of a nuisance. She let out a long, whining noise, felt her throat undulate and contract as she tried to express the tumult that was eating away at her. Troy kissed along her neck, making the whole thing even more unbearable.

"F-fucking God," she whined. Her voice sounded strange in her ears.

He giggled, a little hysterically.

"I-" she couldn't deny it anymore, the feeling that had been building inside her. For much, much longer than this rutting had been going on, for longer than this afternoon or even month. She stuck a hand in her mouth, gnawing on it. "I love you…"

He stopped, suddenly, freezing. That was no good. She slapped him on the ass, hard enough to make her hand sting. He resumed driving down into her, faster and more urgently than before. He made a deep, grunting noise in his throat as he accelerated his pace. She caressed him where her hand had struck, rubbing at his cheeks in a slow, circular motion.

"Say it again," he practically growled.

"I love you!" she shouted again. "I love you so fucking much! I love the way your cock feels. I love the way you make me feel. I love the way you look at me. I love the way you can just hold me, and I think everything's going to actually work out. I love the way you feel inside me. I love the way-"

His mouth found hers again, silencing her, his tongue capturing hers. She felt the walls of her cunny ripple against him, felt the pleasure spike deep inside herself. She cried out, in time with him, moaning into his mouth until their lips parted and she wailed, high and wordlessly. He pulled on her bottom lip, capturing it between his; sucking on it, stretching it taut. She clutched at his shoulders as another, stronger shiver ran down her spine. Her flesh contracted against his, and she felt his cock, every contour and jut of it.

He pulled out, suddenly, shifting his weight, raising himself onto his knees and further over her body. He grabbed her just above the ankles, spreading her legs open and dragging her back across the fabric of the car seat, grabbing her hips and lifting her so her ass and lower back stuck out into the air and her upper back pressed into the cushions. It was quick and unexpected, and the friction of the move scraped prickly hot and cold against her skin, bunching her shirt up even higher, flattening her sensitive nipples as they strained tighter against her bra.

Her legs were like jelly as he hooked his biceps behind the crook of her knees. She felt them tighten, felt her tendons stretch and pull as he pressed, slowly, deeply into her, bending over so his face was right up against hers. Gradually, torturously, his weight spread her thighs open, flattening them against her stomach, causing her pussy to stretch and tighten ahead of his prick. She could feel his cock twitching as he slowly parted her folds. When he stopped, buried to the hilt inside of her warm, wet sheath, her kneecaps grazed her collarbone. She rubbed the back of his thighs with her palms, squeezing her eyes shut.

She remembered, idly, as she groaned at the deepness of his penetration, the time she'd shown him this position. It seemed so long ago. He'd been such a quick learner, all for her.She wanted to tell him how proud of him she was. She wanted to tell him about the ecstasy he was inflicting on her. To find the words to describe the way her walls strained against the sudden, thick push of his cock against them, the way the hard knob of his pubic bone pressed, deliciously, into her naked, sensitive clit, the way the burning feeling in her muscles and ligaments arced across her like a white hot fire, their paths burning out from her lower back and legs and shoulders and neck and coming together, coursing into her core, adding fuel to the hot, roasting furnace between her legs where she enveloped him. But the exertion and the pleasure and the heat of her body got in the way. All she could do was moan, helplessly, and try and shape the sounds coming out of her mouth into something that resembled "love… you…"

"I love you too…" he breathed, slowly beginning to move gently back and forth inside her. "So much." She opened her eyes again. He was gazing at her rapturously, his eyes dancing across her face. "You're so beautiful." He brushed a strand of hair out of her face, cupping her cheek, smiling a smile so open and wide Britta thought she might fall into it and never find herself again. She smiled back, her hands wandering upwards to caress the smooth, pliable skin of his butt. He took a deep breath, slowly pulling his cock back.

"F-faster…" she breathed, gasping, her hands squeezing into the flesh of his ass as she felt the length of him slide against and out of her. His face was twisted into an ecstatic grimace, and sweat beaded on his forehead.

"Feel so… good…" he said as he bore down into her with the same slow, languorous pace, until their bodies were pressed together again.

"Don't make me… spank you again…" she teased, ever-so-softly pressing her fingernails into his skin. He laughed, drawing out of her more quickly this time.

He fucked her, over and over, faster and harder with each stroke. She flexed her wrists, pushing him more forcefully into her, pulling him more sharply out of her. The slap of his pelvis against hers grew louder and louder; the squelching of their sexes became more and more wet. She allowed the momentum of his thrusts to roll her further and further onto her back, and he penetrated her more and more deeply, pressed into her clit with more and more of his weight. The orgasm built even more quickly, now, devouring her up, causing her to spasm and shake uncontrollably as he pressed her harder and harder into the seat. She was still swearing in a hoarse, shrill voice when a second orgasm hit, the intensity of it reducing her voice to a slow, silent wail. She arched her back, pressing up into him, her grasping white-knuckled fingers pinching into Troy's ass. His voice was there, with her, hot and wet in her ear, telling her just how strongly and sharply and massively he _felt_ for her, until her grip on him slackened.

Her face felt hot. Her whole being felt hot. She ached. But the heat didn't lessen her need for the friction of his form against hers, and the pleasure she and Troy were building together settled into the knots and pinches and strains of her body, smoothing them out. Troy was panting deeply now, and Britta could feel the coiled tension that had built up in the muscles of his ass. He was unrelenting, gliding in and out of her, his jaw clenching in time with his thrusts.

Time seemed, for a moment, to slip away, as she came under him again. She felt herself freeze there, right at the peak, at the moment where she surrendered herself over to the hot, white oblivion that opened up inside her. It seemed to go on forever, to absorb everything else into it. Her desperately in need of a tune up car. The parking lot. Greendale. Her past. All of it faded out, leaving just them, together, holding each other in that moment.

But then Troy's cock pulsed inside her. She felt it spasm and contract as it sputtered, splashing the inside of her walls in something hot and wet and sticky. He lowered her gently back onto the cushions before collapsing onto his haunches, panting. He just sat there for a moment, watching her. She tried and failed to push herself up onto her elbows, her shaky arms unable to support her own weight. Moving was… difficult. And not worth it. So she gazed back at Troy, hoping her expression came close to reflecting the amount of adoration she saw in his eyes.

She'd done this before: tried to shut down the pain and uncertainty and fear with sex. She'd done it a lot, actually, if she was honest with herself. And usually it worked, at least for the brief period of time when she rubbed her genitals, desperately, against another's. It was usually in the time after, in the quiet lull that came after they'd both come (if she was lucky), that those feelings would return with a vengeance. They'd bring their friends. They'd tell her she was a freak, a slut, a damaged little idiot who tried to make her world seem a little less bleak by fucking the closest, most emotionally damaged man she could find.

She didn't feel that way now. She didn't feel that way with him.

"Come… cuddle…" she finally got out, after gasping uselessly for a while. He crawled over, slowly, and collapsed next to her, one arm circling her hips. Britta shifted her head enough so that she could look at him, panting and pressing his forehead into the car seat next to her. "I love you…" she repeated again, whispering as she shut her eyes, a smile spreading across her face.

She felt Troy's hand lightly brush against her sex. "So messy…" he murmured, his finger collecting a dollop of his cream from inside of her. She heard his lips smack and then it was back, digging into her folds again, squelching in and out of her.

"That's… that's biology for you…" Britta said, sleepily, her eyes rolling back behind closed lids as she pressed herself into his hand, stretching out as much as she could in the confines of her backseat. "It tends to get pretty… messy…"

"I feel like… I feel like I should do something about that…" he said, pushing her shirt up over her bra and kissing down her body. "Like I should… clean up after myself." She blinked her eyes back open and watched, blearily, as he pushed the front seats up as far as they would go and crawled down into the expanded legroom. It put his face on an even level with her well fucked cunt, but it looked like a tight fit.

Britta thought about Duncan had said, earlier. She thought about Oedipus, and wombs.

She giggled. He looked at her confusedly, grinning too. "Okay… just… go slow," she licked her lips, felt how thick and bruised they were. "I'm feeling really… sensitive…"

He lifted her left leg and draped it over his shoulder, pulling her closer. Grumbling a little at having to move, she scooched towards him, shifting into a half reclining position, resting her shoulders against the door's armrest.

He laughed, his hands caressing up and down her inner thighs. "I love how cute you get when you're sleepy. " She whined at him, loving and hating that he was torturing her like this. He kissed, slowly, up the inside of her leg, his arms snaking behind her and circling her ass, hugging it closer to him as he pressed his nose into the thick nest of her pubic hair, just above her engorged clit. He breathed deep, the rushing air tickling at her bud as he pulled it in through his flaring nostrils, desperate, as if it wasn't oxygen that sustained him but instead her scent. Britta could smell it too. The air around them was thick with the smell of it, of her musk. And his. And their's together, mingling; twirling and curling around each other in the confines of this small metal chassis, just like the faint wisps of smoke that still hovered around the roof of the car.

"I love the way you smell," Britta offered, her voice high and lilting. She darted a hand down past his face and curled two fingers up into her juicy lips, swirling them around gently, gathering a collection of their mixed fluids. He lifted his chin and watched, kissing her lazily just above her opening as she brought her fingers just under her nose and sniffed them, the thickness of the smell filling her nostrils, spreading and blending across her senses. She could taste it in the back of her tongue, almost. Deciding that wasn't enough, she plopped the digits into her mouth, licking the product of their lovemaking off them, feeling it slide down her throat as she swallowed. "I love the way you taste."

"Keep doing that," he said, his voice pleading. He was giving her those god damned eyes again, the big 'aw shucks, I don't know why you're making such a big deal out of little 'ol me' ones, the ones that made him look like a little lone puppy pushing its paws up against the glass and thumping its tail against its display case as hard as it could. "Keep telling me why…"

His tongue was slow, meticulous, as it delved inside of her. She'd been right about feeling sensitive; she was extremely tender and gave a little half cry at his entrance. She grabbed his hand, intertwining her fingers with his, squeezing hard when it became too much for her. She could feel him carefully and gently lap up his cum as it slid slowly down the inside of her walls, pushed by gravity down into his mouth.

"I love how gentle you are," she said as his tongue darted out again. He kept the pressure easy and light, and retreated quickly at the slightest sign of pain or discomfort. "How safe -mmmhmmm- you can make me feel." She couldn't do it. Words weren't enough. "Get… get back up here…" she moaned as he licked along her slit, stopping just short of her clitoris. She reached down, grabbing his shoulders and pulling at him awkwardly.

He clambered up to her and she kissed him, tasting their taste again on his lips. He was hard again and she stroked him with her hand as their tongues met, lazily.

"C'mere…" she whispered, pushing herself up into a half-sitting position, the back of her head resting against the door. She grabbed his ass again, pulling him until he was straddling her with his knees at her sides, his dick flopping in front of her face.

"Hey Little Buddy," she cooed, before sliding it into her mouth. Troy groaned, his voice thick. She relaxed her throat and bobbed, working more and more of him past her lips as she breathed through her nose, her eyes closing. Her tongue ran up and down the smooth, velvety skin of his cock, tracing little figure eights around and around it's circumference. She played with his balls, cupping them in her palm and rubbing them gently as her fingers massaged the smooth skin of his taint.

"Fuck…" Troy muttered, his hand working into her hair. "You're so fucking good at that…"

She smiled, looking up into his eyes. Then she started humming, ever so lightly, her lips and throat vibrating against him. His knees bucked and he cried out, but her hand gripped his ass more tightly, holding him steady. His eyes screwed shut. She knew he wouldn't last that much longer.

She darted a finger inside of her snatch, wriggling it around and covering it in a thick coat of lubricant. Then she lowered herself as far onto Troy's cock as she could manage, her nose inches from his pelvis, and worked the finger into his asshole. Their was resistance, but she pushed through it, feeling him contract around her digit just like her throat was contracting around him.

"B-britta-!" Troy's voice was hoarse, his tone worshipful. She found the round, thick bulb she knew was his prostate and gently rubbed it in small, concentric circles. That pushed him over the edge. He gave one, great, powerful spasm inside of her mouth, and she swallowed, feeling the muscles of her throat work against his cockhead. She kept swallowing, squeezing his member, milking it over and over until it shriveled and shrank away.

She pulled back, gasping, a line of saliva running from her lips to his rapidly deflating penis.

He bent over her, kissing her again, pressing his body into hers, shifting his weight onto the elbows that dug into the car seat at either side of her. It was a slow, tired, sleepy kiss. Britta loved it.

She loved him.

She told him so again, once they'd broke apart, as they lay on their sides facing each other. She repeated it, over and over, as she kissed every part of his face she could get her lips around. His chin. His cute, flat little nose. His cheeks. The skin of his eyelids. His lips. She said it until her voice finally gave out and she stopped, content to just hold him, to feel the rise and fall of his chest against hers.

She fell asleep like that, a little while later.


	16. For She's a Jolly Good Fellow, Part 2

_A/N: AAAAAAAHHHHH okay sorry. I know it's been a month since I've updated this thing. I've resolved to finish this fucker up before the show starts airing again next month, though. That may or may not happen, I still have one more chapter to go before I get to the final endgame, which, as this chapter implies, is gonna be Halloween. Hopefully I didn't alienate too many of you guys with the long lag time between chapters._

_UPDATE: Oh, yes, I forgot to point this out: the line Britta is thinking of towards the end comes from another fic of mine, Dream Analysis for Drunkards, where I went ahead and made up what Troy's text to her in OVM was. Just a reminder, in case you haven't read it and/or forgot._

She was flying. She could see the land far, far below her through little patches in the cloud cover, streaking by impossibly fast. The sun shone brilliantly, making the contrast between blue sky and white cloud all the more stark and beautiful. She rolled, banking into one of those little white balls of fluff. It was soft and warm. She snuggled into it.

"Britta?"

This cloud was really noisy. She shushed it.

"Britta, I'm hungry," the cloud said, kissing her gently.

"Go to sleep, cloud. Go to sleep."

"What?" he asked in an amused voice, kissing her cheek again. "I'm a cloud?"

She blinked an eye open, and immediately slammed it shut again. The sun had sunk, treacherously, and was now glaring directly into her face through the far passenger side window. She felt her belly rumble, became suddenly aware of just how empty her stomach felt, too. She whined, angry at the light, annoyed at the fact that her two strongest desires, sleep and food, were mutually exclusive.

Troy cooed at her, sitting up over her so he blocked the sun with his body, running a hand through her hair. She opened her eyes again, slowly. He was looking down at her adoringly.

"Hi sweetie," she said, licking her lips. Her mouth was dry. Her head still buzzed pleasantly.

"Let's go get something to eat," Troy said in the same happy tone. "Before Shirley's closes."

Her stomach rumbled again. "M'kay," she said, sitting up. "Just let me-"

She reached over into the front seat, fishing in the glove compartment for a can of air freshener. She gave the car a liberal spraying, until it and she and Troy all smelled strongly of pine. Then she reached for the door.

"Uh, Britta," Troy said, quickly, grabbing her hand before she could open it.

She looked down. Neither one of them were wearing pants.

"Oh, duh doy," she said, blushing. She giggled. "That woulda been pretty bad, huh?"

He laughed too.

#

She emerged from the car a few minutes later, fully clothed. Britta stretched, lifting her arms over her head and raising herself onto her toes. She liked the spontaneity and excitement of car sex, definitely, but it wasn't exactly comfortable. She looked over at Troy, who'd just exited from the other side of the vehicle. He was rubbing the back of his neck and arching his back, stretching his jaw from side to side. She grinned at him.

He smiled back at her. "You seem like you're in a better mood."

"Hmmmm..." she replied, pursing her lips as she sauntered over to him. "I wonder why that is?" She giggled again, grabbing his collar in both hands and pulling him in for a kiss. Then she took his hand in hers, and tugged him towards the quad. "Come on, I'm hungry too."

"So, I'm a cloud?" he asked again as they made their way away from her car. The gym parking lot was a lot emptier than it had been when she'd parked there in the morning; not surprising, really, considering that most classes had already let out.

Britta blushed. "Oh, that was just a dumb dream I was having. Probably 'cuz of the weed."

"Tell me about it," Troy urged her gently, smiling. "I want to hear."

"It was a flying dream..." she said, leaning into him. "Everything was warm, and fluffy, and bright. And yeah, I guess you were a cloud in it. It sounds stupid, I know."

"What dream doesn't?" he said, laughing. "And it sounds like it was nice." They walked in silence for a moment. "So, you got any plans for your Halloween costume yet?" Troy asked finally. "It's coming up, and I think the Dean's probably gonna go all out this year, what with actually having money and all."

"I'm thinking of sewing up something, again, yeah," Britta answered as they sidestepped a parked Volvo. "Maybe something bird related? I haven't decided yet. How about you?"

"Oh, I've got something in mind," Troy said, grinning. "It's gonna be super duper slutty. You'll love it."

Britta laughed. "No hints?"

"Nope. It's a surprise. " They stepped over the curb, onto the sidewalk. "You're gonna just have to wait."

She stuck her tongue out at him, squeezing his hand. The idea of Troy objectifying himself for her sounded pretty intriguing...

"Oh, hey!" Troy called out, suddenly, his eyes fixing on a point over her shoulder. "Annie!" Britta turned, and saw a familiar, cardigan wearing figure walking the opposite way across the quad. Annie looked up, startled, her eyes widening.

"Oh!" she shouted. "Hey guys!"

"Hey Annie!" Britta said, hesitating slightly as she and Troy approached each her. The younger woman had looked almost... regretful for a moment. But there was nothing on her face now besides her normal, cheerful smile. "What's up?"

"Not much! Just got out of my finance class, now I'm done for the week. TGIF and everything." Annie's laugh sounded slightly too shrill. "What have you two been up to?"

Britta saw Troy smile bashfully and look away. She interjected quickly, deciding it was important to give Annie a much more PG impression of what they'd been doing that afternoon. "Oh, you know. Just, uh, studying." Britta ran a hand through her hair. "We're gonna go and get some dinner at Shirley's, if you wanna come along."

"No, that's okay," Annie said, wincing. "I was going to head back to the apartment. Abed and I usually cook dinner together before Movie Night." She scowled suddenly. "You guys better not be late! Abed said this was one of his favorite movies ever!"

"Oh, uh..." Troy said. His fingers tightened around her own as he turned to look at her. His eyebrows were raised, his eyes questioning. "Did you still want to...?"

"What!?" Annie demanded. "You're not coming?"

"Of course we are!" Britta said quickly. She felt her heart melt a little bit at Troy's concern, and she shot him a grateful look as she squeezed his hand back. A part of her really did want to take him up on his implicit, unarticulated offer, and squirrel him away all to herself for the evening. Most years she probably would have. But today her mood was brighter, and she wanted to share that, and him, with her friends. And for them to share their joy with her, too.

"Okay, good," Annie said, relaxing, her grip on her backpack straps loosening.

"What's the movie, anyway?" Britta asked, looking between them. She was usually the last one to find these things out, what with not living in Apartment 303 and everything.

"'Moon,'" Troy said, "and Abed's right about it being the best." His eyes suddenly started to water up. "Sam Rockwell, man..."

"No spoilers, Troy!" Annie said, quickly. "I swear, you're almost as bad as Britta about that." He looked put out.

Britta ignored the crack at her. "Well, I'm looking forward to it. Abed's picks have usually been good, so far."

"Usually?" Annie's eyes darkened. "You mean when you don't bring your dumb politics into it."

"Hey!" Britta said, her resolve steeling. She could put up with getting called out on ruining the endings of movies, but she was god damn right about The Dark Knight Rises. "I didn't bring politics into shit. Christopher Nolan brought politics into it when he lifted the aesthetics of the Occupy movement, the closest thing this country has seen to a genuine expression of democracy in almost-"

"Okay-" Troy interjected. "Let's just go back to the 'its a flawed movie' compromise, alright?"

Britta took a deep breath. Troy was right, it wasn't worth getting into again.

#

_"And another thing!" Britta said as the credits to The Dark Knight Rises continued to roll. She'd worked her righteous indignation into a good lather by this point. "If Batman and Alfred were so close, couldn't he have left, like, a note that said 'hey dude, not dead' or something instead of letting him cry over an empty grave like- Abed what are you-"_

_The younger man had stood, glaring at her from beneath his mask. He didn't do the Batman voice now, though, even though he'd been doing it the rest of the evening. His voice was loud, cracking with barely contained emotion. "You're an IDIOT, and your idea of what passes for film criticism is embarrassing to those of us with actual taste!" Then he whirled, retreating into the blanket fort._

_Britta sat there, stunned, her head ringing slightly. Maybe getting high before the movie marathon hadn't been the best idea in the world..._

_"Oh, great! Nice work, Britta!" Annie snapped angrily. "Real great! You chased him back into his room. Do you know how hard it's been to get him out of there this summer?"_

_"Shut up Annie!" Britta said, her face reddening. Troy wasn't saying anything, wasn't even looking at her. The night had been going so well! Now everything was slipping away. She stood. "I'll go talk to him."_

_"What?" Troy asked, his head snapping in her direction, anxiety spelled out on his face. "Britta, I don't think that's such a good idea."_

_"I'll be fine, Troy," she said, walking over to the blanket fort. "I can take care of myself."_

_"Not you I'm worried about..." he mumbled, but she ignored him and pushed the flap of the blanket fort open. It was empty, but she could hear breathing, heavy and strained, coming out of the cardboard box Abed had erected in the middle of the room._

_"Abed?" she called out, hesitantly. He didn't respond. She knocked, lightly, on the box. "Abed, come on, talk to me." She paused. "Look, I'm sorry I badmouthed Batman. Full disclosure: I'm pretty baked right now and I might have gotten a little... ranty. And I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. But you've got Troy and Annie worried. And me, too."_

_Slowly, the door of the box opened. Abed sat there on the floor of it, his long, skinny legs pulled up to his chest, still wearing his Batman costume. He'd removed the cowl, though. Britta sat, too, bringing herself down to his level._

_"I... don't know why I did that," he said, finally, not meeting her gaze. "Sorry I called you an idiot."_

_"It's okay, Abed," she said gently. "No one's mad at you. Do you.. do you want to talk about it now? Or do you want to wait till next week?" They'd had two sessions together, now. Three, if you thought about the one with Evil Abed. Britta tried not to._

_"Now's good," he replied, still staring at the ground. She suddenly wished she had her notebook and pen with her. It always helped settle her nerves during these things. Speaking of..._

_"Okay. Obviously you got mad out there." He nodded, not saying anything. "As to why... do you know what a fetish is Abed?"_

_He looked up at that, frowning at her. "I don't think I want to have sex with Batman, Britta."_

_"No!" she said quickly. "Not like that! A fetish is just some external object something you project things onto. It's a concept that started in European anthropology to explain West African religious practices, but lot's of different thinkers have used it. Marx used it to describe the way that the marketplace obscured the relationship between workers and owners, and, yeah, Freud pretty much thought they were always substitutes for the penis. But that dude was, like, __obsessed__ with dicks. Except of course when it came to the phallic objects he kept sticking in his mouth, then 'sometimes a cigar was just a cigar'." Her tone was mocking, and she snorted before catching herself. "Okay, sorry. I'm ranting again. My point is: you put a lot of stuff onto pop culture. Remember when you kept dressing up as Inspector Spacetime when you were trying to convince us that the Dean had been kidnapped?"_

_Abed nodded again, looking down at himself, at the costume he was wearing. "Yeah, I get what you're saying. You're saying I... fetishize... Batman as a character, to help me feel... in control?"_

_"Yeah, exactly! And when I attacked the movie, it was kind of like I was attacking that source of control." She watched his face as he squinted, thinking. "Does that sound right?"_

_"It sounds pretty accurate." He quirked his head at her. "Kind of the same way you felt attacked when you felt like the movie was going after Occupy Wall Street. You fetishize that too."_

_Britta blanched. "Well now, come on, that's different, 'cuz..." She stopped. "Okay, maybe that's a little fair." She winced, her guilt rearing up again. "Sorry if I ruined your marathon. I know you were looking forward to it."_

_He smiled. "It's okay. I mean, yeah, the movie watching mood's pretty dead. But now we can make it a weekly thing! A Movie Night, every Friday."_

_Britta smiled back. "I think that's a great idea, Abed. Do you want to head back out there?" she asked, gesturing her head back to the main room. "I think Annie wants to murder me, right now." She didn't mention Troy._

_"Sure. In fact, I think we should probably get out of the apartment. Maybe go out and grab something to eat? Help clear the air?" He pushed himself up out of his sitting position. He offered her his hand, and she took it, letting him help her up. They left the blanket fort, together._

#

"Well," Annie said, smiling again, her anger seemingly forgotten in an instant, "I'll let you two grab your dinner." She punched Troy in the arm, and he winced in pain. "See you guys tonight!" Then she was off, towards the parking lot. Britta watched her go for a little bit before she and Troy continued onwards to the cafeteria.

"Does she seem mad at me?" She asked him, her nose wrinkling with concern.

"You?" Troy asked, rubbing his shoulder. "You're not the one who got punched."

Britta laughed at him. "Awww, poor baby. She's like half your size!"

"She's been doing it a lot lately!" he said, indignantly. "And she somehow always manages to hit the exact. Same. Spot." He worked his fingers into muscle as he spoke, stretching his arm.

"I kinda... yelled at her. Near the start of the semester. About Abed. And... therapy..." Britta reached up and scratched the back of her head. She always felt awkward bringing that subject up with Troy, but this thing with Annie was bothering her. "I thought we'd worked things out, but I don't know she's just seemed kind of... hostile lately." She exhaled loudly. "I was kinda mean... maybe I should apologize again?"

Troy put an arm around her as he pushed the doors to the cafeteria open. "I'm sure you weren't that bad," he reassured her. They made their way to the end of the fairly long line that lead to the front of Shirley's. "And besides, you don't have a monopoly on getting mad and actin' like a jerk. You know that. What with... what with that text I sent and all." He swallowed suddenly, and looked away.

She turned to him, frowning. She remembered that text; she'd read it to herself enough that summer, over and over, that she knew it by heart. Did he really think "it hurts me to see you this way" qualified as acting like a jerk? "Troy..." she said, sadly, reaching up to stroke his cheek.

"No, sorry, you're right," he said quickly. "I should stop prying about that stuff." He looked sheepish. "Forget I brought it up."

Her frown deepened. _ What?_Now she was just confused. Were they even talking about the same thing?

_You're high_, she thought. _ Just forget about it_. And so she did. She'd regret that, later.

_Author's Post Script: Moon is really good, go watch it. Also Britta's right about The Dark Knight Rises._


	17. Like, obsessed with dicks, Part 1

_A/N: __Okay. Another long gap between updates. I'm sure you're beginning to recognize a pattern here. Sorry. I've had major writer's block with this chapter. Originally I intended it to be one parts instead of two, but I decided to just post half now and finish it up later._

_If anyone wants to volunteer to take a look at what I've got of the second half, let me know._

Annie Edison searched through the rack of clothes at the local Goodwill store, searching for something she liked. Her eyes gleamed as she came upon a pretty looking yellow cardigan. She pulled it off the metal bar, removing it from it's plastic hanger and slipping it over her shoulders. She buttoned it and turned to Shirley, who was browsing in the same aisle next to her.

"How does it look?" she asked her friend, twirling around, modeling it.

Shirley scrunched her nose. "A little tight, isn't it?"

Annie frowned. "I don't think so." She paused. "Is it?" She looked down at herself. It didn't really seem to fit her any more snuggly than any of her other sweaters. She worried, again, that Shirley was resentful of her presence on these little outings she had with Jeff; the first time they'd gone out together last month she'd thought she'd heard the older woman mutter something about being a chaperone under her breath. "I think it's fine."

"Alright." There was a self-righteous quality to Shirley's voice that stung at her, as did the idea, as it seemed to imply, that _she_ ought to be the one feeling defensive here. She took the cardigan off and slid it back onto it's hangar.

"I like it and I'm going to buy it. It's only ten dollars; that's easily in my budget for clothes this month."

"You asked me what I thought," the older woman responded, chidingly, as she thumbed through the blouses on the rack in front of her, "and I told you." Annie took a deep breath. She must have allowed some of the bitterness she was feeling towards Shirley seep into her tone.

"How's the sandwich business going?" she asked, deciding it was best to change the subject.

Shirley brightened a little at that. "Pretty good! I mean, it's a lot of work, and Pierce isn't really any help at all, but I expected that. People really seem to like it, though. Sales are ahead of what I'd projected." She looked up from the clothes rack and over at Annie. "It's... I mean I always had faith it'd work. But it's good, to get that faith confirmed, you know?" There were the hints of something tired and stressed that belied her words, but maybe that was just her projecting. "How about you? How's the Hospital Administration-ing coming?"

"Oh, you know," Annie replied. "Same old, same old." She pushed down a familiar feeling of panic as she thought about the next half decade of school she had to face. About how regimented and planned her life was going to be, and about how this little island oasis of friendship she'd managed to form at Greendale was bound to get swallowed up by the desert of adult life.

"What is?" Jeff asked, appearing suddenly behind them.

"Finally!" Shirley said. "I thought you were never going to get out of that dressing room." She pushed past him, a blouse tucked under her arm.

There was an awkward silence that came in her absence. It made Annie feel bad; they'd gotten better about those, over the past month, and she couldn't help but blame herself. Blame the sense of ennui that had come to strangle her waking mind, more and more constantly.

"You okay?" he asked, after the moment had stretched out too long.

"Yeah!" she said, and she hated how forced and strained her voice sounded in her own ears. "Did you like any of the shirts we found?"

"Actually, yeah, I did. I think you're right; I do look good in purple."

He smiled, and Annie felt the stirrings of something that she told herself she wasn't going to feel anymore. She grabbed the sweater she'd worn into the store from the rack where she'd left it, and pulled it on. It was a purple pullover, growing slightly ratty with age, and was much more in line with what Annie knew Shirley thought of as appropriate dress. It was also far too big, a relic of the era before she'd lost weight, which made it all the more unflattering. She'd chosen it specifically, today. "I'm just surprised you let me and Shirley drag you to a thrift store. I hope it's not too much of a downgrade from Banana Republic or wherever you usually shop."

"Well... I should get used to it, I guess," he said, darkly.

Annie frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I've been trying to find another law firm in the area that will let me consult for them, like my old firm did before Pierce fired them." Jeff sighed. "But it's no use. Alan's telling everyone I got let go because I'm was a liar and a lazy worker. So I'm gonna have to start curbing my spending."

"That guy's a jerk," Annie said, laying into the insult.

Jeff laughed. "Yeah. He is." He looked sad for a second, staring off at some point beyond her shoulder. "But whatever. The results the same: no one wants to touch me. And I'm starting to worry that's not really gone change once I get a real bachelor's either."

"Oh..." Annie said. She'd forgotten about that little snag in Jeff's professional life. She forced herself to be cheerful, to not bring him down more. "Well, I've got all kinds of thrifty living tips! And you could always ask Shirley for a job!"

"No!" Jeff said quickly, alarmed. "I mean... look. I think she feels bad about me and Alan falling out. But it wasn't her fault really; it needed to happen. If it wasn't over a dumb squabble about whose name should go on a piece of paper, it would have been something else. I _couldn't_ go back there, Annie. I can't be the kind of person I want to be and work in that environment again, even if Alan wasn't running things, which, by the way: also my fault." He sighed. "I just don't want to make her stress out about it. So don't mention it to her, okay? I've been trying to keep it under my hat."

"I-" Annie paused. What was one more thing to sit on, anyway? "Fine," she said.

#

"Hey guys!" Annie called as she hung her coat on the closed door behind her. "I'm home!"

"It's just me," Abed said, walking out of the blanket fort. "Troy's out." He didn't need to say with who. She reached down and grabbed her plastic shopping bag from where she'd dumped it on her way in. "Did you eat yet?"

"No," she answered, just like she did every Friday. She pulled her hat off and walked forward to meet him. "Do you want to make some buttered noodles?"

"Sure!" he said. He sounded happy in a real, genuine way that a couple of months ago she was afraid she might never hear from him again, and she smiled.

"Okay, go ahead and get started! I'll just be a second; I want to get changed first." She brushed past him, heading into her room and shutting the door behind her.

When she reemerged a short while later, now dressed in yellow, Abed had already moved into the kitchen and was pouring noodles into a pot of boiling water. He looked up as she entered the kitchen, scooching over to allow her access to the plastic bag drawer (an innovation she'd introduced to 303 that Troy had called "revolutionary") near the end of the counter where she deposited the now empty shopping bag with its brethren.

She met his eyes. "That cardigan's new," he observed, not blinking. She smiled, tugging on the hem of her sweater. His stare was always so intense.

"Yeah!" she said. "Do you like it?" She didn't do the little twirl, this time.

He didn't say anything for a second, but he didn't look away either. "It looks nice," he finally said, his voice flat and emotionless. He turned his gaze back to the boiling water.

"Oh..." she said, trying not to sound disappointed. She wasn't even sure what she'd been expecting. She turned, reaching into the refrigerator and grabbing butter and a block of cheese. She laid the cheese, a hard wedge of asiago, on the counter. The butter she threw into a skillet, turning the heat up until it started to melt, then slowly sizzle. It didn't cover up the sound of the sudden silence between them.

"You got it today?" he asked, finally.

"Yeah!" she said. "I went shopping with-" The shrill beep of the kitchen timer cut her off, and she backed out of Abed's way. He lifted the pot and upended it into a waiting colander in the sink. "-with Shirley and Jeff today. I would have invited you but I knew you were busy with your festival."

"That sounds like fun." Annie stepped to the side as Abed moved the noodles from the sink to skillet that was now coated in melted butter. She pulled the plastic off the asiago she'd left there and began crumbling it onto a plate as he tossed the pasta and hot dairy together.

The cheese had been another innovation of hers, and even though Abed had resisted for weeks any alteration of the recipe, method of preparation, or serving style of his precious buttered noodles, he'd finally relented one night halfway through the summer and let her add a handful of her favorite cheese into the mix. They were still doing it now that way now, months later.

And she looked forward to it every week.

"What?" he asked. She looked up from what was she was doing, startled. Abed was quirking his head at her. "You started smiling," he explained.

"Oh," she said, feeling herself blush. "I just... this is really nice, you know? Cooking with someone else. It's one of the things I like best about having a roommate." She handed him the plate full of cheese, and he tossed it into the skillet, stirring again.

"I don't think I could handle it," he said. He divided the noodles evenly between two colorful, earthenware bowls, and handed one to Annie.

"What?" she asked, frowning as she took it.

"Living on my own," he said, his face blank. But there was something in his voice, like it was just getting caught at the edges of his throat, that made her frown deepen.

"But you lived on your own in the dorm for two years," she said, placing her serving of noodles on the counter next to her and stepping closer to him.

"That's different. I knew everyone on my floor there. I saw them almost everyday. And before that I was living with Dad. But just me, all alone? With myself?" He shook his head. The arm that held his bowl of noodles up was starting to tremble, slightly, and she reached out to still it. "I don't think I could do that."

"I don't ever want to do it again," she said, truthfully. He smiled.

They grabbed their noodles and sat down at the table, he with his chopsticks, she with her fork, and ate together.

#

"Tonight," Abed told them with total confidence, "I've picked the perfect movie." Troy clapped, cheering. Britta, who was folded in his arms on the couch, giggled at him.

They'd shown up a little while after she and Abed had finished cleaning up after their meal. From their freshly dried hair and the smell of chlorine, Annie had guessed that they'd been swimming. The gym bags, dripping wet and now hanging in the bathroom, had backed up that deduction.

Nobody had asked if _she_ wanted to come swimming.

Annie was sitting in what usually was Troy's recliner, still was when it was just him, her, and Abed. It was only when there was someone who he wanted to _spoon _around that the couch got dragged over, and her usual chair (wooden, not that she was _complaining_, it was a perfectly comfortable chair) got displaced and all earlier complaints about her needing to stay out of _his_ chair got forgotten when someone blond was laying on top of him-

"I've analyzed your reactions to the Movie Nights up to this point, quantified them, and combined them with what I know about each of you-" Abed continued, and she focused on him again, blinking, "-and out of this maelstrom of data and statistics I have pulled the 2011 film _A Dangerous Method_. Well, actually, I pulled it out of bitTorrent but that sounds a lot less poetic. Anyway, it spikes high in each of our interest quadrants. For me and Troy, it's directed by David Cronenberg, who also directed _Scanners_ and the _The Fly_. I thought it'd be appropriate, considering that this is the last Friday before Halloween."

"Sick!" Troy said. He grimaced, bracing himself on the couch and shaking with intense, fake concentration. Britta turned to look back up at him, startled. Then he pantomimed his head exploding, violently and in slow motion, taking time to detail the little flecks of gore raining down with his fingers. Britta wrinkled her nose. "That dude's the best. _Videodrome_ desensitized the shit out of me towards violence."

The sour look on Britta's face intensified. "Ewww. I hate those types of movies. Gore is so gross. And I've already been having really weird nightmares around Halloween lately, I don't want to make it worse with a really scary movie."

"Really? You keep getting nightmares around Halloween?" Troy asked. She looked back up at him, nodding. "Me too! They're always about zombies, which is weird because I've been staying away from _The Walking Dead _on purpose this year."

"Yeah, mine are also about zombies!" Britta said, astonished, and clutched his hand. Annie rolled her eyes. "What do you think it means?"

"Well, actually," Abed said, interrupting. "Maybe this movie will help with that question. It hits your quadrant because it's a biopic of Carl Jung, founder of analytical psychology."

"Really? Like, historical and everything?" Britta asked, brightening. Abed nodded. "I just got to that part about him in the textbook for my theory class! Oh, but it's _J_-U-N-G, Abed, there's no Y in it."

Annie smirked. She didn't say anything though.

"Well, either way," Abed said, easily, "I don't think it'll be much of a horror movie." He turned away from the blonde and towards her. "And, finally, for Annie: in the starring role as a young Carl is Michael Fassbender."

"Oh," Annie said, trying not to blush. She didn't think her crush had been so transparent. She _did_ defend Prometheus pretty hard, in retrospect. "I... I do like him, I guess."

"Exactly," Abed agreed, retaking his seat. "Four quadrant movie."

"Uh," Troy looked around the room. "Am I the only one who doesn't know who doesn't know who Carl Jung is?" He pronounced the name like Britta had.

"He founded this branch of psychology that's all about, like, dreams and archetypes and shadow selves and shit like that," Britta said, already excited at having an excuse to talk about her major. "One of his big things is that the thing you hate in other people is usually something you hate about yourself. And he came up with a bunch of stuff about psychological types that's the basis of a bunch of personality tests. He's up there with Freud in terms of importance in the history of psychology."

"Freud's in the movie too," Abed interjected. "He's played by Viggo Mortenson."

"Magneto _and_ Aragorn?" Troy sounded incredulous. "Shit. That sounds too good to be true."


End file.
